In Part One of our Co-Motion Cycles shop tour we showed you the brazing and welding of their frames. We also made mention of the fact that Co-Motion strives to make as many parts in-house as possible. In the second installment of our shop tour we will highlight some of the machines used and the parts created.
Pictured here is one of three CNC machines that reside at the Co-Motion facility. Zach at Co-Motion says:
“This is the Mori Seki CNC lathe with live tooling. This is where we make all our turned parts including fork steerers (single piece uni-crown design), head tubes, BB shells, seat collars, and eccentric BB shells. We also do some full tube mitering for our most popular stock tandem sizes.”
Click through for more hot CNC action, including video of this machine doing its thing…
Here is another one of the CNC machines. This is the Okuma vertical CNC mill used for prototyping, making shop fixtures, and it cuts the stainless steel dropouts.
Machine bit storage.
Multiple CNC bits used for machining.
Speaking of dropouts, here are some freshly machined pieces that are heading to the tumbler. There, they will be de-burred and have their edged smoothed out.
Here is the finished product in a polished stainless steel option. Expect to see more of this at NAHBS.
Dropouts aren’t the only items made using stainless steel at Co-Motion. Here is a box of mitered stainless tubes off the lathe that will end up becoming max adjust stoker stems.
This is the complete max adjust stoker stem after making it’s way through the polisher. So shiny!
Co-Motion routes the disc brake cable along the down tube, and because of this, there were no stock cable guides that worked well on the frames. So, they traded for an injection molder, cut dyes for the parts, and began producing their own.
Above are the finished plastic cable guides made using the injection mold process.
Co-Motion doesn’t make any of the parts for the wheels they use. However, they do build up the majority of the wheels in house using a lacing machine and a hydraulic tensioner. The tensioner is a very similar machine to the one used by Rolf Prima (scroll down for the video.)
For our third and final installment, we dive into the world of paint and polish so stay tuned.
