![]() ![]() At Bastion, after an initial chat with Schultz or Woolcock about their requirements, they will spend the next 2-3 hours at Riderfit, one of Bastion’s companion companies at the front of the building. They won’t enter a flashy retail store and view scores of factory-fresh bikes, choosing a few to test-ride and deciding which one they want to take out the door with them. When a cyclist commissions a bicycle from Bastion, they should not expect the experience they might have purchasing a bike from one of the well-known larger manufacturers. ![]() This co-operative approach is an intriguing part of their business model, and just one of the ways Bastion likes to do things differently. Schultz says they think of it as an advanced manufacturing bicycle hub because, though there are synergies between the businesses and they send each other work, they share the space because none of them could afford to be there independently otherwise. Bastion empowers the rider to design their own adjustable bike that is a unique fit not only to their desired specifications and aesthetic preferences, but the physical capabilities of their own body with all its ticks and quirks.īastion shares the industrial warehouse it occupies in Fairfield, north-east Melbourne, with three other specialised bicycle-related companies. All keen cyclists, it was a classic case of creating the bike they wanted to buy but which didn’t exist. Bastion Managing Director Ben Schultz recalls how he and his co-founders, James Woolcock and Dean McGeary, wanted to incorporate their three passions: cycling, leading-edge manufacturing and Australian-made production. The character lines along the length of the arm are reminiscent of those found in the lugs of their frames helping tie the crank back into the distinct Bastion aesthetic.After the R&D specialists were handed their notice from Toyota in 2014, they sat down and nutted out a new business concept. The asymmetric design of the crank gives the feeling of movement even when stationary. The hybrid titanium and carbon fibre spindle is a novelty in the industry, and aligns with the design philosophy of Bastion of using titanium for complex shaped and loaded parts, especially where contact is involved, and carbon fibre for simple shapes where the loads are well defined and the angles of the fibres can be aligned efficiently to carry those loads. The internal structure and wall thickness maps have been optimised over 17 design iterations and the result is a stiffness to weight ratio that is some 2.4 times a solid forged aluminium crankset and is approaching the level of the cranksets they produced for the Olympics. The people from Bastion Cycles spent months benchmarking the best in the market, building the design targets, and then determining the technology, materials and manufacturing techniques they would use to meet those targets.Īlready experienced in making cranksets for track cycling and after developing significant intellectual property, it is clear that they know how to reinforce and structure the interior of the hollow crank arms to resist the combination of torsional and bending loads for the lowest possible weight. They know that they aren’t the first ones to produce cranks, or even the first to produce 3D printed titanium cranks, so they were determined to be better, at least in the metrics they find to be the most important, like stiffness to weight ratio. All mating and bearing surfaces are precision CNC machined. The 30 mm spindle is comprised of 3D Printed titanium drive splines with a moulded carbon fibre torque tube connecting them. The design features hollow 3D Printed titanium cranks arms reinforced with Bastion’s signature internal structural lattice. ![]() Team progressed their ideas from concept paper and business proposal through to sketches and CAD (Computed-Aided Design) development. Working entirely remotely with regular design reviews done via video conferences, the Willing to make the most of every situation, they committed to planning the crankset project. During the pandemic, Melbourne went into one of the longest and strictest lockdowns in the world, and the entire staff of Bastion Cycles had to work from home for over five months. ![]()
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