Posts
41
Joined
7/16/2017
Location
Post Falls, ID
US
Edited Date/Time
5/12/2018 9:48am
After i finished rebuilding my 99 yz125, I realized i had pretty much built the same bike Yamaha is still selling. Why do we depend on what the big mfgs are selling us?
I wonder if a similar concept could be applied to what I have seen with "open mold" carbon road bikes.
Smart people (not me) could start by reverse engineering a common bike like the last gen steel YZ two strokes. Suspension, brakes, etc would all be compatible with existing bikes.
Get a manufacturer in China to make small runs of cases and frames. Maybe a whole new US based bike industry would spring up, with builders like Derek Harris on here being able to basically build brand new bikes to their own specs.
I wonder if a similar concept could be applied to what I have seen with "open mold" carbon road bikes.
Smart people (not me) could start by reverse engineering a common bike like the last gen steel YZ two strokes. Suspension, brakes, etc would all be compatible with existing bikes.
Get a manufacturer in China to make small runs of cases and frames. Maybe a whole new US based bike industry would spring up, with builders like Derek Harris on here being able to basically build brand new bikes to their own specs.
The point is, the community would own the designs and be responsible for developing them. Some of the most refined and dependable products in the world are open source.
But, I respect knowing your limitations. Assembling your own bike from parts wouldn't be for everyone.
The idea of open source MX stuff is cool. It made me smile and I clicked on the thread.
Compare the cost of a rebuilding a 10 year old MX bike plus rebuild parts to the cost of manufacturing your own.
It's not even close. These are highly complex machines which have been refined to an astounding level of performance over decades of iterative development.
I'm a machinist, I run a small CNC shop and have plenty of CAD/CAM and drafting experience. I can tell you from first hand experience in manufacturing and design that there will be many hours required to fully characterize and make a good set of prints and specifications before you can even start manufacturing a single part. Crowd sourcing that has it's own risks. Most home-gamers don't have access to calibrated inspection tools and the skills to use them.
Reverse engineering a design is actually a huge undertaking. There's a whole manufacturing process behind that design and you have to be very savvy to understand all of the clues left behind on the finished parts.
Don't take my post as 100% negative. I think open source is a cool thought and as for building our own parts, I may or may not have entertained building some engine cases in my shop in the near future.
The Shop
I get what you are saying about the cost, but that's not really the goal. Again, this isn't intended for the DIYer or homebuilder, but possibly to jump start a new industry of US made bikes.
Can you imagine if the only mountain bike brands were still Trek and Gary Fisher? Nowadays you can build yourself a sweet bike using a frame from the US and whatever parts you want. (And it will be more expensive than a mx bike :-/) If we had powerplants available, our sport would be there too.
Look up the open mold carbon road bikes, it's interesting at least.
EDIT:
Also, this would probably need to be about keeping 2 strokes alive. Bringing back the cr500 would be a good place to start.
Here's an example. The printer we have at work has a small issue with the stepper motor drivers right out of the box. Since the firmware is completely open source and there is a massive community behind the printer, someone was able to determine that a pair of $10 stepper motor drivers would correct the problem, because the stock ones were interpolating between certain commands incorrectly. Incredible, a cheap and easy fix that likely would never have been found if every bit of technology was kept in house, and this benefitted the company as well because the change will be implemented on the new model coming out as far as I know.
It's just an interesting thing to think about. I don't know to what level it would work for something as big as a dirtbike, but regardless it's something that makes you think. That community finds problems and corrects them, rather than defending manufacturers to the point of nausium and denying blatant issues, which is a big difference in attitude from the mx community.
RC drones are a good example of this idea especially in regards to racing equipment. You buy a frame and assembly the rest of the components. This is good because when you crash you can easily rebuild using the parts that are still good. However when it comes to refined packages for an easy user experience in flying and video, it's almost impossible to beat DJI products. Thus is the limitation of the open source platform. It would take a long time to build an open source bike that is better than an Alta, and it would probably be more expensive anyway.
If you have a bit of time it’s a great watch. Very clever and driven man!
Reverse engineering is a huge undertaking, however starting from scratch is even more so. Really the hardest part about reverse engineering something is to determine the little things the manufactures do to help improve the actual manufacturing process. For example, one could make a sand casting of a case and have a damn near perfect mold of the actual part, however they won't know how to determine a delivery system that allows the molten aluminum to flow into the cavity properly, or if they needed to possibly make their cavity slightly larger due to shrinkage, or other little issues like that.
Pit Row
but you seem to be forgetting the wave rolling in now with e mtbs and altas red shift, etc etc.
tho thar said molds for ice engines will be getting scrapped in the future, doubt you could buy them tho..
great idea, need more brains, open source is perfect, tho that is more about software afaik...
thought provoking thread..
better than the bitch fest "elis gonna stomp marv, you just watch" endless crap for drama guys, who should watch less soap operas on a box.
I don't think that even in 20 years the home-gamer level of 3d printers and other CNC machines will be good enough to manufacture all the components used to build a motocross bike, even when you set the bar at the late 90's YZ125.
I do think that community level assets will be there. Some of the larger maker spaces around these days actually have production CNC equipment available to use, as well as some other manufacturing tools.
Although I'm not part of that maker & maker-space movement, it's the most logical place to get an open-source group together and produce physical parts for the designs that come from a project like this.
Early made a great point about the electric bikes... This will be far more relevant for e-bikes of all kinds, not just for motocross. The RC car and RC aircraft are small scale proof that something like that could work for at least some of the components. Do we see e-conversion kits for sale to retrofit that 1999 YZ125 chassis, or a derivative of it? Time will tell.
The software technology behind it is getting more and more available, but for most applications you really need to step up to a more capable software than something like Fusion 360, and that's still serious money. And of course you need a solid engineering background to apply the technology correctly.
We're obviously machining these clamps, but they could be 3D printed for even more performance gain. That technology is maturing rapidly, but is still very pricey so it's a ways out before it becomes mainstream.
Not sure how I'd feel just yet about 3d printed metal mx parts, esp in critical areas.
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