One week later we got some trophies

Just the other day I got a call from Red Bull's Central California guy Rico asking for some help quick on a throphy project.... Not a big budget and nothing super crazy but something fun.. and 3 of them...

Here it goes and really quick...

My buddy Paul Troutman and fellow fabricator was saying to me, you should make Red Bull snowglobes for this event.... so I am not going to lie.... I used his idea... with a week until they were due I didn't have much time to think about it and I really liked it anyways.

My first sketch was to mount the globe to a little plate with a mountain cut out.

So I ran one quick on the CNC plasma cutter without any fine details to see how it looked with the globes I had rushed over.

It looked good but after talking with my buddy Matt we both said the mountain needed to look like a mountain... So back to the computer...

I then did a more mountain design

I am good with Solidworks but theres little things I don't know like how to do Jpg to drawings and such and so I called in Matt Carney because he a machine on design programs and a hell of an engineer. He did a bunch of the tune ups on the bulls to make them ready for the laser cutter.

 

 

Ryan of Seaport Stainless in Richmond,CA does all my laser cutting

He really makes it happen for me when I get in the time binds.

Ryan and I dig thru the bottom of the laser to find some of the best things... like the cut outs of the bulls.

Back in my shop bending away on the DiAcro an hour later...

 

With the first one looking right on the money...

I decided to use a big 1/2 radius die to give it a nice smooth bend.

Next, I had a friend Kyle Fvk hammer out these rad little mountains with 2013 cut in the side of them.

The kid is a hell of a sculpter and has a blast doing it.

 Mocked up in a few days since the order came in from Red Bull
  I had to get the final go ahead from Red Bull.

All systems are a Go...

2 days until the event.

Loaded with snow, water, clear coated and bolted down, these little creations are ready for the slopes of Tahoe,CA

The event is really neat... Heres a video.

 

100,000 people and counting.....

First thing .....

Thanks to the readers for making MLS a fun project for me and being interested enough to come around and check it out. For a lot of people 100k people viewing my blog doesn't seem like a lot of people but when your from a small town in Minnesota with population of only a few thousand people, 100k seems like a lot! 

well for you electronic nerds, a 100k resistor, kinda like the amount of page hits but not really.

Its getting close to Xmas as well so happy holidays to everyone and that means my normal quick escape back to Minnesota to make me realize how cold the earth can be for 5+ months of the year.

It was the Fwod' girls bicycle club's Sadie Hawking bike ride.

Classic style for Sadie Hawking dance or ride, 

the lady asks out the dude so, 

I got asked on the ride by Sanja and had a blast riding Oakland and Alameda. 

Oh Boy....

One project at a time, but this one ended up in my hand 

and I couldn't say NO

Hydrogen Fuel cells all ready to go...!!!!!

Did someone say Futuristic BoardTracker from 2050?

Expect some madness no one has ever seen with the

 titanium sheet metal.

I started drawing it in Solidworks... Electric 36ers front and rear ??

You are going to have to nail bite for a while on this one... 

New Bicycle frame fixture

Well, time to build some thing cool that looks as good as it works, or well, I hope it works as well as it looks.

I decided to go with a free floating fixture for building frames because no frame I build is the same and an Anvil Welding fixture just limits you to a normal bicycle frame, and as we all know, it gets old after a while.


I don't do production runs but I wanted to build a frame table that was able to do production runs if need be, so making a fixture that doesn't need to be completely disassembled every time was key.

The fixture was all designed in Solidworks computer aid drawing program, as all my projects are drawn on Solidworks before they hit the workbench. This is a new idea to a lot of people, its crazy to draw something on the computer then build it, no guess work and fast build times!!

Here is a few pictures of the parts of the slide blocks for the bottom bracket, there is a titanium bottom bracket between the two cones. The fixture needs to seal as well to prevent gas loss, while the inside of the bike frame is filled with inert gas for welding.