Whoa.

I'm glad I was sitting down.

That's the most amazing thing I've seen on a bike in years. Innovation is not dead.

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'It never gets easier, you just get crazier.'

https://bikerumor.com/...-with-no-derailleur/

https://www.bikeradar.com/...n-drive-shaft-52587/

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Make Inside Out Sports your next online tri shop! http://www.insideoutsports.com/

That's easily the most innovative bike idea in the last ten years. I hope Ceramic Speed goes forward with it. I could even see how certain components, such as the cassette, would actually be less expensive to manufacture. My biggest concern is how only a couple of teeth on the front chainring are engaged at any given time... but I think that can be dealt with.

https://bikerumor.com/...-with-no-derailleur/

This looks incredible. If they pull it off, it would be the biggest innovation in cycling in decades. Getting the cartridge bearings on the shaft to shift smoothly between different gear ratios presents a challenge though. I wonder if it would work paired with some kind of CVT hub design or planetary gearing.

wow, this has to be the most positive post on ST ever?


have all the haters logged out?

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http://www.thetrinerd.com

From an engineering standpoint, that's pretty cool. It'll be interesting to see how the development progresses.

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http://bikeblather.blogspot.com/

I’m certainly no engineer, but my first thought was it would be tricky to eliminate flex in the system? This meet grinder could also have a nice aero cover to prevent injury quite easily.

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Side note: I really like the raised drive-side chainstay. It might not be aesthetically perfect but it would make for quicker and easier rear wheel changes and flat repairs.

Yeah, it seems like rear wheel changes would be less of a pita. Plus I’d save lots of time not cleaning and lubing my chain!

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Matt

Wow if they can get this to work.......amazing!!!

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"see the world as it is not as you want it to be"

I stopped reading when I got to "it doesn't actually work" ...

Every product goes through that phase at some point though. And it does work from the sound of it, just only as a singlespeed which is more than i thought they'd have when i started reading the article.

It certainly will work as a single speed.

I look at this as really cool concept, we will see if it goes further. It certainly would need to gain interest from one of the big players to make it happen. So much so, this maybe an idea that gets ceramic speed scooped up by someone else in order to preserve the patent.

Now, on the engineering side. With wireless technology available now, I can see this working. Put a clutch mechanism on the hub similar to where the free hub sits now. This would allow for the gear to move out of the way. A wireless mechanism to move the drive sprocket and you are in business. That is easier said then done, but the mechanics would be pretty simple. From a force standpoint, and without doing any math behind the subject, it appears their gear design will not work very well and have the longevity that would be desired. The cross section of contact will simply be too small.

The other risk to this design is cost. Sprockets are likely very very cheap to make. Chains are cheap to make. Gears on the other hand are not and I believe to make this work correctly they will need to go to a gear design instead of what they have shown.

so all the national track federations are calling ceramic speed to integrate this into their track bikes for the 2020 olympics, right?

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Amateur recreational hobbyist cyclist
https://www.strava.com/athletes/337152
https://vimeo.com/user11846099

Hi Bryan,

Thanks for sharing.

It’s been a busy day here at Eurobike and now it’s time for a beer :)

The system, whilst early in our development, is trustworthy in terms of real world use.

I’ll keep an eye on the forum and drop in when possible.

Ben

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Chief Marketing Officer,
CeramicSpeed

Very cool. Although some thought the disc brakes would cut you up pretty bad...

At first glance, this looks very cool but I see a lot of problems to make this work.
1) chain system is so simple and works so great and is cheap that it will be difficult to get people to convert.
2) other manufacturers may not want to play nice. Looks like frames have to be redisgned and gearing components may need to be redesigned. I am not sure if the other companies would accommodate for the changes. After all redesigning and testing costs money.
3) cost. Even if it becomes a realistic option, I am asking if I would spend an extra $1000 and be limited with aftermarket components? I am not sure.

the concept is very cool indeed, but it reminds me of those concept cars at auto shows where you see a cool car that doesn’t come to fruition.

If you move to a true gear design, you don't need a different frame. Simply use the derailleur mount to mount the end of the shaft, you don't need to be on the center line of the wheel with a gear. Bike design becomes much less critical.

You could make it shift by using a spline shaft, and sliding the hub with the rollers to slide back and forth on the shaft to engage different sprockets. By attaching a secondary hub to the hub with the rollers, you could operate the shifting with a cable and spring, like current mechanical derailleurs. The biggest difficulty lies in the fact that the sprockets are aligned in only one position; there is only one point you could slide from one sprocket to another. This could be overcome by allowing the rollers to completely disengage from one sprocket before engaging with the next sprocket.
Not sure I like the unsealed bearings, but they are going for minimum friction on this prototype, so that is OK. A more practical device may use bushings (like a chain and some derailleurs do now) but there would be a friction penalty. But this is still early in the development cycle. Looks very cool.

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salmon - not because I'm a fish

What's really interesting (to me, at least) is that the interfaces are basically the same as a chain roller/tooth interface...just turned 90 degrees so that you can fit a roller bearing inside the roller.

In other words, you could do the same thing with a chain, if you just fit miniature ball (watch) bearings into each of the chain rollers so it didn't have a sliding interface on the inside of the roller against the chain pins. That would make for quite the expensive chain, though...then again, it would last quite a bit longer than a regular chain.

I find it interesting that everyone immediately jumps to some sort of wireless activation of the shifting mechanism. How about just add another external bearing (there's already a gajillion in the thing...what's one more?) on the movable shaft and just manually move it back and forth externally...sort of like the throwout bearing on an automobile clutch? One could do it with a cable, or electronically...even hydraulically.

Also, there's one thing that might cause some of the main drivetrain players (i.e. Shimano, Sram, Campy) to not want to license this...it removes a steady revenue stream from a "consumable" item ;-)

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http://bikeblather.blogspot.com/

Pretty sure that's already on a campy crank ?

But as the logos have been flatted back perhaps they don't know about it yet ... lol

WD :-)

Alternately the “bevel gear” could be contoured in such a way to encourage shifts (e.g. “fall” onto the next gear, with every other “tooth” being contoured an opposite direction).

'90s technology at its finest.

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1890s that is...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shaft-driven_bicycle

In this video they describe how the shifting will work:
https://www.youtube.com/...amp;feature=youtu.be


It's a pretty interesting idea. Lots of people have tried to improve on the mechanical efficiency of a traditional chain drive system for a long time without practical success. It's really very efficient to begin with. I'd be interested in seeing an independent test. How do they deal with the concentric shaft friction? Are there roller bearings in there too?

I'll also be interested in how fast that shifting can happen. To make that work they are going to have to get an encoder in there somewhere. Maybe in the parabolic shifting channel it will be able to span the whole range of gears within one revolution, but that servo motor will have to be awfully fast. Like really fast.

I wonder how much this will cost....

Your idea about incorporating watch bearings into a conventional chain is interesting, but they would have to be such small diameters, I wonder if hertz stresses would be a deal killer, even at the relatively low loads involved in cycling.

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Ed O'Malley
www.VeloVetta.com
Founder of VeloVetta Cycling Shoes
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