Leave it to a bunch of engineering students at Yale to design a crazy spokeless bike. It’s not the first spokeless bike we’ve seen, but it looks a lot more like a real bike than past models.
Only the back wheel is spokeless, but that’s just because they only had a limited amount of time and money to build this. It would be pretty simple to do what they did to the back wheel to the front wheel. As for how it works:
It’s a single speed setup. We used two cranks and two bottom brackets in the front to gear up the ratio. It goes from (IIRC) 53 to a 13, which is connected to the second crank and another 53 which connects to the rear hub. The rear hub is just a normal ratcheting rear hub that we mated to our belt pulley. Not sure if all these bike terms are right, but that’s the general idea.
The front wheel would be almost exactly the same as the rear wheel except that it could be a little lighter. Some of the aluminium can be shaved off since there’s no powertrain to connect to.
[Reddit via Crunchgear]
StevoTheDevo
Wednesday, February 17, 2010 at 8:05 AMWhat’s the point?
Spokes add flex to the wheel such that the wheel has some inbuilt shock absorption.. For that advantage, they add minimal weight (especially at the important outer rim).
I imagine these Spokeless designs are quite heavy at the rim as they have to withstand the full rider’s weight, therefore they’d be harder to drive (more weight at the rim, means more stationary momentum).
They’d also have to be inflexible to maintain a circular shape, thereby passing all bumps in the road through to the frame and subsequently the rider.
Apart from looking funky, spokeless has no purpose!
simulacrum
Wednesday, February 17, 2010 at 10:20 AM@StevoTheDevo
Are you asking what the point is in having engineering students design and build a spokeless bike?
1 – it teaches them about engineering
2 – it’s kinda fun
I don’t think this was designed with a commercial or even practical purpose in mind. It’s just a design exercise.
David
Wednesday, February 17, 2010 at 11:12 AMIt would be awesome if version 2.0 had some type of magnetic levitation system to hold and run the rear wheel, the power required would make it totally impractical but awesome
hubris
Wednesday, February 17, 2010 at 11:27 AMImo, industrial and mechanical designs should deliver a benefit of some kind. This is the design equivalent of getting small kids to cut stuff up with scissors ’cause you’re too lazy to teach them something. It’s pointless makework.
simulacrum
Thursday, March 4, 2010 at 12:02 PMYou’re teaching them to use scissors. If every engineering lecturer could dream up a practical successful innovative product for his students to make semester after semester, he wouldn’t be teaching them he’d be out there making billions manufacturing these things.
The students do learn how to apply their new technical skills to engineer a functional mechanism that meets a specific given objective. Most of them will end up working in jobs where the task (inane or not) is already set out for them, they just have to use their technical skills to join the dots.
Those who have the imagination to come up with something new and innovative that meets a need will end up running their own startups and making lots of money… generally imagination isn’t something you can teach at university, at that point they either have it or they don’t.
edthecow
Wednesday, February 17, 2010 at 8:38 PMhmm – how about making the wheel 1.5m diameter and put the padded seat + steering + brakes + gears inside, then get rid of the front wheel altogether? Perhaps such a monocycle would be too unstable, or too expensive, or just too dumb.
Maybe so too is the bike in this story, but I’m happy that at least there are some kids out there trying something new instead of just complaining on the internet.
steve
Tuesday, August 17, 2010 at 10:33 AMand use dildos to control it?
… sounds familiar.