As you may or may not have heard, at Frostbike this weekend our newest baby took it's first bow.  The long awaited geared version of the Nature Boy, which thematically we've dubbed the Macho Man. 

Nature Boy lovers have been asking for this for a while now, and we're proud to be able to give the people what they want.  Beyond all the typical AC touches that you've come to know and love: headbadge, two tone paint, brazed seat collar, sexy fork, E.D. coat, etc, the Macho Man will sport our new signature vertical dropouts.  It's got top tube cable routing to keep everything out of the muck, and was designed around Shimano's new top pull cyclocross front derailleur the CX70.

In tubing and geometry it is identical to the Nature Boy, because we saw no need for improvement or any glaring deficiencies in our single speed beast.  If it's awesome, leave it alone. 

Let's get to some pics.

You should know that my attempts to capture the bike's true color have failed.  In this morning's light it looks kind of bananay but in fact it is a kickass citrus color. 

This as you see it, with the exception of a slight change in rim, is the complete bike spec.  It will retail for $1595 MSRP.

105 shifters, Salsa Cowbell 3 bar

Cane Creek S-10 headset, Salsa Promoto 3 stem

Continental Cyclocross Race 700X35c tires

FSA Gossamer Crankset 46/36 rings, Shimano CX70 front derailleur

note the barrel adjuster

 
105 rear derailleur

AC signature vertical dropout

The Macho Man will be out in September 2012

If you'd like one, please get your local shop to prebook it to ensure availability, we expect these things to go quick.

Packy Golan - Single Spotter from Omar Sebai on Vimeo.

not funny. I know.

Maybe you should check back next week.

After we received our rapid prototype pieces and verified their functionality, we began the process of collaborating with our dropout supplier.  Because no issues were apparent, they were comfortable with going straight to tooling.

These dropouts are investment cast.  It’s a fabulous process to use if you need to make low-volume intricate parts that are not easily made in a conventional casting mold (popular for jewelry, sewing machine and gun parts, and lugs). 

If you are not familiar with the process, here is an incredibly simplistic account of how it works in the case of this dropout:

A wax version of the dropout is molded and is attached to what is essentially a wax funnel (a sprue).  The sprue and dropout assembly are then repeatedly dipped in a fine ceramic slurry (small particles of ceramic in water) and allowed to dry.  The ceramic particles are deposited on all surfaces of the wax dropout and sprue, creating a hardened coating.  Gradually, the ceramic coating is thickened into a thick, hard shell around the wax at which time the wax removed through melting or some other process. 

What remains is a ceramic shell with the relatively intricate void of a dropout.  Steel is poured in.  The shell is broken away.  Sprue is cut or broken off. 

Bam: dropout.

(Here is a more thorough explanation:  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Investment_casting)

Anyway, few months after sending files to our manufacturer this is what showed up on our doorstep:
 

You will notice in the image below of the non-drive side some funny seams in the surface of the part.  These tooling lines are caused when parts of the mold are uneven- they are resolved in the final product (our personal prototypes have them but your frames will not).  The lines appear around the axle pad and the AC of each dropout side and they illustrate the fact that this dropout is designed so that the branding can be removed so the dropout can be made without branding.

Why did we take this approach?  Well, our frame-part manufacturer also recognized the lack of attractive and functional dropouts of this type available openly to builders so they requested that we allow them to produce blank versions of this dropout to support that market.  As we are huge fans of steel hand-made bicycles (Jeff and I could easily be considered junkies) we thought this was a fabulous way to share the love.

Next, we had to produce frame prototypes to verify that our dropouts could be built into frames the way we wanted them to be.  For me, this was the most terrifying part.

In this picture you can most easily see that the cylindrical seat stay interface is rotated in a few degrees so that the seat stay would interface with the dropout at more of a right angle.  You can also see why we made the interface a little larger than the seat stay diameter… so that we would have just enough room for a weld bead.

The end!

Bonus Notebook Sketch:

Craig Etheridge from Circadian Pictures on Vimeo.

stoked to support this event

Here's the story from Mike himself:
I used to be good friends with Mark Gator Rogowski back in the day in So Cal. That was one of his personal decks that he gave me in the mid 80s. It has a claim to fame: that deck was ridden by a friend of mine (along with Gator) in the Suicidal Tendencies "Institutionalized" video - the old punk band.

I've had it ever since. Some stickers are mine, some were on it when I got it. ...Ancient history.

This is easily one of the coolest things I've ever gotten to shoot photos of.  Walk with me.

For those of you too young to know who Gator was before his life went so tragically awry, check out this clip of him riding in Vision's 1989, Barge at Will 

and here is that famous Suicidal Tendencies video in which the board is ridden

This is probably my favorite blog post ever.

From the 2D sketches shown in the last post, I created this very rough first 3D model:

This is a good opportunity to point out that our axle interface is shorter than many (but certainly not all) semi-horizontal dropouts of this type and all track ends.  Track ends, such as our Hennepin Bridge dropout, are designed around the user’s need for several gear configurations without having to adjust chain length.  As a result, that style dropout tends to have a lengthy axle pad.  The Space Horse dropout was sized so that a single-speed or fixed rider would have sufficient tensioning capability in a single-gear configuration without having to use a half-link in their chain. 

The overall shape of the dropout was driven by its need to be as visually and as structurally compatible as possible across all sizes of Space Horse frames.  Below, there are several quick screen shots of the dropout applied to geometries across the size range.  

46cm

55cm

61cm

For the next step, I dropped in the rack and fender mounts and added a web between then to make them more robust.  Also, I re-surfaced the dropout to add the indexing stop at the front of the axle pad (to be discussed more later).

Before prototyping the dropout, I rendered the dropout on a complete frame.  In case you were wondering, all of the steel frames and frame parts I render are shiny red with stainless accents.  Like any reasonable human being, I have always wanted a shiny red bike (I have never had one).

Here are some emotional photos of the resulting rapid prototype:

After a few minor tweaks to the design based off of the rapid prototypes, we started to collaborate with our dropout supplier.  

In the next episode I will discuss the tooling process and final development.  

Let's get to it.

Kevin O, sends us this rad photo of his Nature Boy

Chris W, sends over photos of his custom powdercoated Dropout

I think it may glow in the dark

In a shot after my own heart, here' s a snowy Nature Boy with a super hot build kit on it from Charles M

• velocity a23 rims with all-city new sheriff hubs
• nokian hakkapeliitta 40c studded tires (they fit with plenty of clearance - probably enough to add fenders)
• cane creek scx-5 brakes and scr-5 levers
• salsa cromoto stem and bell lap bars
• ritchy wcs seat post
• brooks swift saddle with Ti rails
• white industries eno crank set and freewheel (42X18)

 And finally from David, comes a dual duty Airwolf for getting rad at the indoor MTB park or kicking ass at polo.  Bonus points for the horse!