I bought my first triathlon bike a bit over a year ago and the first impression was that I cannot ride that bike because of the saddle it had. It was just making a huge pressure to the perineum right from the beginning of every ride. I probably have a bit too much forward tilted pelvis by nature which makes this pressure problem even worse during aero position. Anyhow I was just wondering how can anybody ride a triathlon or a TT bike with a regular type of saddle.
Then I started looking at options and noticed quite quickly that there might be idea in these center splitted saddles. I tried one but I was still getting numb down there. Then I started to plan a saddle by my own. I have a 3D printer at home and made a prototype and another prototype and another and… until I was happy after maybe seven versions.
Last summer I used my own saddle the whole season and I was really happy for it. The main idea in my design was to make the center area as open as possible. I got some soreness to my ramus bones, but that was mostly because of very limited padding on my saddle. But the numbness because of neural impingement was gone. It was nice to be able to pee normally during the breaks of longer rides
Now I have gone a step forward and just finished my new version which is made of carbon fiber. I added a bit more padding to it to make it even better. Unfortunately the season is already over here so I will probably get a chance to ride with this new saddle next summer. I hope my carbon fiber laying technique Is good enough to keep that saddle in one piece. At least it feels really stiff by hand. One thing which is making this saddle very stiff also is the way I fixed the rails. They are just straight titanium rails which go inside the saddle. This makes the construct very rigid. I like it a lot in that sense that I can feel the power from my legs going straight to the pedal and the saddle gives a rock solid support for the stroke.
Here are couple fo pictures of my saddle. I just noticed that it is not 24cm long which I guess is the minimum UCI lenght limit for saddles. Currently I am cycling just for my own enjoyment so the lenght doesn’t matter so much
Nice job. Looks very similar to the Bi-saddle I used all 2018. Best part about it is it’s fully adjustable. I don’t want to ride with anything else. You can check it out here. https://www.bisaddle.com/
I found a roll of adhesive foam from Aliexpress and just cut that in shape. The foam is 2mm thick and in the first version there was only one layer. Now there are two to three layers in that current version.
Nice job. Looks very similar to the Bi-saddle I used all 2018. Best part about it is it’s fully adjustable. I don’t want to ride with anything else. You can check it out here. https://www.bisaddle.com/
Thank’s for the link and nice to hear you have found your perfect solution. I actually found this saddle just after I had finished my own saddle. Price wise I probably paid more of my own saddle after all trials and errors but it was fun to make it anyways.
In the beginning of the project I sat on a cardboard and then could measure the distance between my ischiums. That’s why I’m happy for the dimensions as they are now. It is also quite lightweight in around 170 grams which is of course very important too
Impressive! It’s like a little pelvis, for your pelvis.
Any plans to commercialise it?
Thank you!
Well why not, it would be cool to commercialise it. You already made a good punch line for it
Do you have an idea how it could be commercialised?
I don’t have experience in bringing this kind of product to market and a lot of questions arise like, how to manufacture it, should it be patented, is it violating some patents, where and how to market it, how to prove its safety etc…
If some of the current manufacturers would get interested of the saddle I guess that might be quite relevant way to make it commercially available. Otherwise I think it would be a huge workload for me to make it possible.
But I’m open for ideas and it would be nice to hear stories if someone has commercialised some bike parts by starting the business from the garage.
Honestly I wouldn’t have the first idea. Maybe ping it to Slowman here, I’m sure he could offer business advice.
My thought is that you take the design to an established manufacturer like Velo (who make the saddles for just about everyone on the market) and see if you can get them to do it
I don’t have experience in bringing this kind of product to market and a lot of questions arise like, how to manufacture it, should it be patented, is it violating some patents, where and how to market it, how to prove its safety etc…
If some of the current manufacturers would get interested of the saddle I guess that might be quite relevant way to make it commercially available. Otherwise I think it would be a huge workload for me to make it possible.
What I’d do… make a few and loan them out to people who can give you objective feedback. Abuse them and see what it takes to break them. Refine the design. Repeat.
Build them. Make a website. Take orders. Ship them. Give your customers great service!
I wouldn’t worry about patents (if any) at this point.
Honestly I wouldn’t have the first idea. Maybe ping it to Slowman here, I’m sure he could offer business advice.
My thought is that you take the design to an established manufacturer like Velo (who make the saddles for just about everyone on the market) and see if you can get them to do it
Probably they would do it. I guess If you make a deal of 1000 pieces they would make molds and do a series. But then you should still do the marketing and that costs too.
What I’d do… make a few and loan them out to people who can give you objective feedback. Abuse them and see what it takes to break them. Refine the design. Repeat.
Build them. Make a website. Take orders. Ship them. Give your customers great service!
I wouldn’t worry about patents (if any) at this point.
Thanks for your insight. This would be at least quite risk free and also cost effective strategy. At some point if the product would become succesful enough the production and marketing could be scaled up at that point.
Maybe I will come back here after I have made ten more those saddles
One issue I actually have already in my mind which should be solved somehow. The length. Is it really so that the saddle has to be at least 24cm long to make it approved for racing?
That sounds like a UCI limitation. I don’t know about tri.
If you can make a decent return selling them for $300 or so, then I think you can have a business. Maybe some custom options, different shape, padding thickness, etc? Mass production will be a big investment of time and money. I’d keep it a one man deal and let demand dictate whether you expand or not.
It is a cold winter at the moment so plenty of time to make more carbon fiber parts to my bike
My recent project has been a pump holder. I bought a small pump and it has a holder which keeps the pump on the frame but it’s not in the centre because that way you can place a bottle cage on top of it. I already have two bottles so I could sacrifice one mounting place only for the pump and I wanted it to be just in the center line of the frame so I decided to see if I could do it myself.
This time I CNC machined a four piece mold from POM plastic and actually that method seems to work quite well. The final product came out from the mold pretty easily and I was really happy for the end result.
If you are interested to see how it comes out from the mold here is a link for a short video: https://youtu.be/kaNK1ZU_hKM
Hello,
It’s been a while since the last posts concerning my saddle.
I have done some long rides during this summer with the current carbon fiber version and it has worked very well. The structure seems to be very rigid so I have no worries anymore that the saddle would fail under me even in some heavier conditions.
I have opened an Instagram page where my idea is to share my stories how I get a long with the saddle in the future.
Here is the link to my page if you are interested to see how it goes:
