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Can Braided Bamboo Shift Bike Frame Design?
Bending fibers into a weave (especially with thicker "bundles" of low modulus fiber) decreases stiffness and increases flexibility and chance of load collapse. Seems counter intuitive in this application.
I can’t help thinking that this is solving the wrong problem. Most of the heaviest parts of the frame are still in metal—the bamboo only replaces the straight, simple tubes, which are relatively low in weight anyway. Plus, the weight of a bike is really not that important for anyone except racing cyclists. I’d be far more interested in a system for recovering energy lost in braking, to reduce the total effort required in start-stop urban cycling. That would actually add to the weight of the bike, but would increase the cyclists average speed and improve comfort. I like the idea of replacing mined materials with grown materials, but when most people are still getting around in two-tonne masses of steel, making already-spare machines a tiny bit less metal-intensive seems like a lot of effort for small gain. Cutting the weight of car wheels by even 10% would save way more total metal mining and refining. Kudos to the designer, and I’d love to see that woven bamboo in lots of other applications—I just think the same ingenuity and effort could have far more impact elsewhere.
I run a makerschool/design collaboration called Mind's Eye Manufactory on California's north coast. We explore and combine diverse materials and techniques, always with an eye towards things human-powered and hand-built, utilizing nature's elegantly simple answers. We build a lot of traditional skin-on-frame kayaks, for example, and are now eager to develop a bamboo bicycle building element. We've had a Herobike kit for two years as we wait for the right moment.
Q: Have you worked with woven bamboo?
A: I've made bikes using full culms.
Q: Would you consider testing a woven frame?
A: I'd be happy to test it, but I expect that it would not be as strong as using natural culms.