Endurance Innovation 49 – Velocite Bikes & Venn Wheels Founder Victor Major

23 Apr Endurance Innovation 49 – Velocite Bikes & Venn Wheels Founder Victor Major

Founder of Velocite Bikes and Venn Wheels, Victor Major is on the show to discuss innovations in design and constructions of carbon fiber cycling components, where the industry is headed, and his love for disk brakes.

• 2:00 marketing hype vs marketing honesty
• 5:30 legitimate Velocite / Venn innovations: filament winding for wheels and AI-assisted design
• 6:15 the Velocite design process: their aero road bike, the Syn
  • Designed to be fast in real-world use at realistic rider speeds
  • Specific design towards integrating bottles, resulting in a concave downtube
• 10:00 carbon fiber composite construction
  • Carbon fibers are only strong in one direction, so fabric orientation in the assembly is supremely important
  • There is quite a bit of variability between products that are are layed up (manufactured) by hand
  • Innovation in carbon fiber construction favours automation where variability is eliminated
• 14:45 carbon fiber construction using filament winding
  • Here’s a video of filament winding in action
  • Issues with the original wet resin process and transition to a pre-preg manufacturing method
• 24:45 why doesn’t everyone build rims using the filament winding process?
• 27:00 on intellectual property and the struggles of enforcement
• 31:15 the end user benefit of using filament-wound rims
  • Easier to build up into wheels and trusted by pro wheel builders
  • Rims are completely uniform, so they stay true longer and experience fewer failures
  • Very consistent end product with minimal variance in weight or mechanical properties
• 38:30 what else can you make using filament winding?
  • Anything tubular: lugged frame members, seatposts, potentially handlebars
  • Making monocoque frames is not possible – yet
  • Possibly non traditional bike frames too like the Ventum or the Cervelo Px series
• 41:00 the possible future of carbon fiber construction
• 45:00 AI-assisted rim design: the Venn VAR77 rim
  • First iteration was a rim that was 42mm wide!
  • A 30mm max width version was eventually chosen to be fastest
• 50:30 a discussion on fork stance width
• 58:30 the future of AI-assisted design
  • No software exists that can use AI to design a complete bike and rider
  • 3D-printed bikes
• 63:00 Victor weighs in on rim vs disk

Learn more about Velocite Bikes and Venn Wheels at their websites.

To order a set of custom-built Venn wheels, reach out to Corey of Cognoscenti Cycles.