Thursday, March 6, 2008

Legend Proto

I'm sure some of you are curious about the Legend so here are a few pics of some of the CNC pieces.
In making the prototype we are forced to hog out quite a bit of material to get the programs dialled and figure out the shape and fit. You don't want to open expensive tooling until you are 100% sure that everything is perfect.

I must say that figuring out how to clamp the peices in the NC machine, tool selection and other considerations really test the critical thinking and creativity of the players involved.
Its a ton of fun watching it come together but it'll be nice when I see the torches come out and it starts being assembled.
I will have more pictures and some video i'll upload if I can find a firewire card for my laptop over here.

What you can see is the left side of the downtube "canoe" which will end up being the pocket for the shock. The reason we chose to do it this way rather then using a tube and just welding a shock mount on top of it, say like the SC V10, meant we lowered the COG [center of gravity] that much further. When you are dealing with a 9lb frame and a shock that is almost 2lbs this can be a noticable difference.
The 3D model above left is what we orginally started with but as you can see the final shape will be that much different [above right 3d model]. Even after all this work there will probably be a few changes to make it easier to manufacture.
The plan is to have everthing ready for the Taiwan show that starts next Thursday so we will be definitely working the weekend and late into the night to put this thing together.

I've already promised Jason at Sicklines the exclusive first look so you'll need to check out his site to see the first finished proto. I'll post it up here a few days later with my comments and lots more pictures of all the small details.