49 - Velocite Bikes and Venn Wheels Founder Victor Major

• 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.