Reinventing the wheel

Chances are you’ve never seen a bicycle made out of bamboo. If you picture a bamboo bike as wobbly or lopsided, though, think again, because when juniors Nick Frey, Will Watts, Doug Wolf and Tom Yersak took on a bike-building project for MAE 321: Engineering Design, they meant business. Not only did they build a bicycle as sturdy as any you could buy in a store — except with a beautiful bamboo frame instead of a metal one — but they also developed the process for constructing the bike, including the heat treatment for the bamboo and the gears.

 

What started as a homework assignment is morphing into a successful and lucrative business. The four engineers met in mechanical and aerospace engineering classes during their sophomore year and have been friends ever since. They were given an open-ended assignment in MAE 321 to build something, and, partly because Frey is a competitive cyclist, the group chose to build a bicycle. The first bike took about a month to make, but after they mastered the technique, they started making each bike within a matter of days. Shifting from a class project to a full-fledged business, they already have many commissions and are planning to spend the summer building bikes in their professor’s basement.

 

The bike project, however, is not just a way to make some spare money during college: These four engineers have big plans for their company, which is called Sol Cycles. They have already started talking to an American who lives in Vietnam about outsourcing production there because of the plentiful bamboo, and several companies have already agreed to donate parts.

 

“We are working with a company called Time Cycle, and they are a very high-end company,” Watts said. “[We are also speaking] with another company that would like to sell their wheels through us.”

 

Frey, in addition to being one of the creators of the bikes, is also the reigning national time-trial champion for cyclists under age 23. His experience gives the group an advantage as it tries to expand its project: Frey’s position in the cycling world helped the group break into the business. “My connections in the industry and the cycling community have helped me get advice and direction from experienced salespeople and engineers,” Frey explained.

 

But what makes these bamboo bikes so successful? Frey finds the bamboo bikes better than some of the $6,000 carbon-fiber bicycles he rides: “Bamboo is even more impressive than carbon fiber because it does a better job of dampening high-frequency vibrations, an incredibly important property in bicycle frames,” he said. “This amazingly comfortable ride allows us to make a bike that is very stiff and efficient, yet a joy to ride long distances, a perfect optimization made possible by nature.”

 

Watts found that “going from my aluminum bike to this [bamboo bike] made a world of difference in the comfort of the ride,” he said. The creators’ mechanical engineering backgrounds helped them understand how to make an efficient, working bicycle that will not need to be modified much when they start production.

 

The Sol Cycle is also eco-friendly, Watts said, noting that bamboo is less damaging to produce than metal. “The nice thing is [that] with metal, you have to expend quite a bit of fuel getting it out of the ground and turning it into parts, whereas with bamboo, the production costs are much lower,” he explained.

 

Additionally, growing bamboo in a controlled environment prevents soil erosion, and the bamboo does not die when it is cut, so the same plants can be used multiple times. “Our frames actually have a negative carbon footprint,” Frey explained. “In building one of our frames, we have actually reduced the amount of greenhouse gasses in the atmosphere.” Sol Cycles help the environment while offering a better experience than would a mass-produced metal or carbon-fiber bicycle. The bamboo bicycles will range in price from $1,500 to $2,800 depending on the model, in constrast to the $2,000 to $6,000 carbon-fiber bikes currently produced.

 

These four gentlemen are engineers, environmentalists and entrepreneurs all rolled into one. Their company’s name, Sol Cycles, Nick said, reflects “not only the feeling one gets when riding our bike when the sun is shining, providing enjoyment for the rider and energy for the bamboo to grow. [The name] also has a wonderful phonetic relationship with ‘soul’, which we feel our bikes have more of than any others on the planet.”

 

All four members of the group plan to stay involved with the company after graduation. While Frey will continue cycling and Yersak will probably go to grad school, Watts said that he and Wolf “may work on the company full time after graduation.”

 

To learn more about the bicycles, visit solcycles.com.