Expectantly planning for the unknown

I look at things sometimes and wonder why I love to over complicate things...?

Other times I wonder why I make things so simple it almost lacks beauty....

Some days its a test of my brain and hands....

Some days its me being lazy or procrastinating....

Either way for some reason it seems to work and I don't ask why....

I needed a vacation because I have been hammering non stop on projects this would be my first vacation since the week before at Autodesk University ! ha really its all work but I love my work....

For my break over Christmas and New Years I decided to help a friend on his newest project.. My buddy Greg Minnaar ( known as the fastest dude on a downhill Mountain bike with a stack of world champs to prove it) has 2 bikes shops now in his home town of Pietermaritzburg, South Africa.

One of the shop locations a existing bike shop business his parents have run for 20 plus years and the other shop dealing with high end stuff being brand new that just opened up about 4 months ago near the base of the mountain bike world cup track ( perfect location for high end riders)

First class style... AKA using up miles...

I went to London for a day to party then off to South Africa 

The project Greg had me come to South Africa was to add some new style to the new high end shop and make those expensive mountain bikes look fancy and well displayed without making it a pain to access them or causing a risk of them falling over.

Arriving for my first cup of coffee at the new shop... as you can see in the background it was a bit bland

It was opened in a flash because of World Cup races so little was done on displays because it almost didn't even get opened during the race weekend.

The trip was almost a month exactly from mid Decemeber until Mid January and having never seen the shop it was kind of a freestyle mission of what I was going to come up with. I had a slight idea what I wanted to build but it was far from being locked in.

Christmas was cool in South Africa, just like the good old USA they eat a ton of food and wait for the fat dude to slide down the smoke stack and dump presents under some sort of tree.... I didn't feel out of place at the Minnaar family party as well, between the crazy aunt telling stories and everyone drinking beers it wasn't far off from my family.

New Years was really cool and we traveled up the coast towards the north eastern part of South Africa on the boarder of Swaziland, where we stayed for a week on a Rhino Reserve and game park called Hluhluwe. The place blows your mind and seeing how hard it is to protect the animals from poachers and just the day to day life is pretty crazy.

Either heart racing and almost scary to extremely dull.... but nothing really in the middle !

This place the game rangers had built up for themselves and others was so cool...

Perfect place to go hide and just think

Even had a visitor on New Years day!

Good luck !

I can't say I was not enjoying it but 

when you want to get your hand dirty and your far from the shop, 

you start to get a little crazy...

 I hadn't really spent any time at the shop looking at what I was going to build, I had some ideas in my head but I just needed to get back to really get rolling on it. 

People always ask me if I just sit around and dream up ideas.... I wish... I am a person that really needs to have something in front of me and sometimes a problem, if its not there in front of me or I am not dealing with an issue or on a mission my brain thinks theres nothing wrong, anything to do or change

I wish I had that ability to sit and look out in the horizon and dream up things that have never been even thought of with nothing to base them off of... that person is truly a special person and if they have the ability to make those things in their head a reality they are truly a unique creature that is extremely lucky.

Once we returned to the shop after all the holiday fun, it was time to work

about a week left in my trip..

I had some sort of idea to do something using all the fallen trees in the back yard of the shop

So, I just started cutting, my Minnesota heritage came out with my grace on the chainsaw.

I can't say I carved any bears or eagles but I handled doing the cutting.

I started thinking about the style of water pipes because its kinda like welding doing all the fit up and connections but without all the tools that I required, 

This was one of my early prototypes to show Greg's world Champ Santa Cruz bikes.

Some true mountain biking history sitting on those finely chainsawed logs... 

With that idea it was back on the scooter down to the water pipe store called Valverite in Pietermaritzburg and the man John behind the counter... 

If he reads this he will remember the long lost faces I made as I mentally cut and tread the pipes in my head and assembled the in my brain and then as if possessed by demented plummer I yell---

quantity 12 of 240mm threaded both ends 25mm..

quantity 54 threaded 75 mm nipples 

quantity 11 of 2000 threaded both end 32 mm pipe

and on and on as his pen runs out of ink...

Sorry John... we did it but it sucked...

These were the next displays I designed and built

The little aluminum rocker wheel holders I made in the USA and flew with them but didn't know how I was going to use them or where I would use them... I designed the geometry of that rocker for another company to use and found that it works really well so I just made a whole bunch of them at my shop in Oakland before leaving. 

This was using the 32mm water pipe and logs I cut down in the back yard 

The main thing with these displays was to keep the bikes neat and in order but also not to tight that you couldn't really see the high end bikes...

With the main focus on expensive bikes being in the back, the other plus is that the most expensive bike don't get messed with and adding to the risk of damage. 

I did a bunch of displays in different sizes and really focused on the racks and displays for products using the water pipes and flanges with wood. 

Really simple really neat looking...

I can't wait to see once all the other stuff on the walls is all adjusted for the new layout what the shop will look like. 

Over all it went super quick like under a few days to hammer out everything...

Put my first MLS stamp on it that says....

Met some really cool people in South Africa and even got met at the Johannesburg airport during one of my layovers on my return back home, one of them was a dude named Dylan - 4 year MLS blog follower/master mind RC airplane builder/R&D wild man and we burned away some hours drinking beers at the airport and chattin about building. Perfect way to get back on the plane...

 Hammered and lighter due to the unloading of MLS t-shirts on Dylan for himself and his buddies. 

 Greg took this picture because he wanted to make fun of me for taking back scrap from Waynes Scrap metal in South Africa.... "Dude thats a perfectly good cast hand wheel... You don't get it..." 

I not only told him that a few times but also airport security all the way across the world... 

Remember you don't always need to weld to build neat stuff...

You can do it with water pipe !

I can't believe I said that..

I take that back ... ok its pretty neat maybe half credit

 Back to the good old RED WHITE AND BLUE  USA ...

Enjoy... 

Escape before Rampage....

As many know now from all the posts and watching Instagram that I have basically turned in to a shop that produces trophies.... Not really what I was expecting but kinda fun at the same time... Its kinda like building a little museum exhibit and theres two ways to put it....

I am either a over payed artist or a under paid designer/prototyper..... I will let you make the pick....


Either way it has been a good year and don't think I only built trophies, this year was all full of madness for the medical prototype world, new bicycle product designs for the "major" brands, a new patent for myself, some aerospace work, science museum fun and a hell of a lot of trophies....

The one thing that always bums me out about the blog is its really not a place where I can show some of the stuff that happens in my shop, secrets, secrets and more secrets and I never get the show them or talk about them. I just feel bad sometimes only getting to post stuff that I know I can post which is trophies. Don't worry because this next year you can expect some really rad stuff to come along that blows minds, if theres one thing I can say that the trophies have helped with, its been it has pushed me test the limits of my machines, test my thinking and do it in a even faster rate then I have before.

I got the call a few months ago that I would be the dude to make the Red Bull Rampage trophies but about a day before I got the word I had booked tickets to join Greg Minnaar in Europe with his lady for the finish of the world cup downhill series, so I knew I wanted to do both and I would just have to hammer on it as soon as I returned from Germany.

Before I left I had to make sure what I was going to build so I started brainstorming....

I will only show you the one concept, because I might have to use the others next year, but this was the quick photo I sent over to Todd telling him this is what I am thinking... Giant cranks and a chainring... He kinda approved, I will leave it at that....

With that info I packed my bags for Germany, knowing when I returned I would have just days to finish it. That kind of scared me so I knew I had to call in the big guns...

Master mind designer - My brother Jason Tiedeken. I knew he would be able to take the concept to a whole new level and make some really sick awards.  I just let him go crazy and make what ever, knowing he wouldn't let me down in the style department.

Working at a science museum is the love of my life and don't think its like cheating on your love by going and checking out other museums around the world, thats what makes yours better !

What better place to go then the world famous Deutsches museum , by far one of the greatest musuems in the world when it comes to science and technology. Its floor after floor of everything mechanical with half of the stuff cut in half so you really know whats going on. This musuem is the KING of cutting stuff in half and showing you the workings, everything were talking, from cameras to kitchen faucets to complete engines they do it and they do it right... I will give you a little taste of the madness.

I walk in and have a melt down over this little Traub A25 screw machine....

I love these things, I just sold mine before the trip to pay for some of the trip...

Maybe it was a sign or something about keeping it but out of the whole museum I kept on coming back to this little Traub machine, it was working making little Munich Olympic towers for the guests out of brass... soooo cool to see kids loving these machines, it made my day.. 

It made me realize watching the instructor/guide, I am not alone as a teacher in a odd way,  when kids hang over the rail and talk to me while I am on the lathe in the museum machine shop... I may be talking to the next inventor of the lathe and changes industry... Who knows... Never doubt

As you walk around the museum you see its really well laid out, starting from one end in a time era.

This floor was all about making fabrics, starting in the 1700s working by hand then as you walk down the hall way you start to go in to todays modern CNC machines with crazy paterns. One of the coolest things they do is take the motors off and make you crank the machines in replacement of the motor, these machines can work at any speed making fabric so cranking by hand works exactly the same just really really slow, but it gives kids and guests a chance to really see what kind of crazy madness is going on to make these complex mills work. 

How about a cut in half airbag steering wheel?

Or camera lens?

or water heaters..?

Radial Engines from an airplane? 

forged titanium fighter Jet wing backbones..? 

How about a cut apart AirBus 300 series with GE turbines?

The German kids were loving this turbine..

Think it was all the sharp parts and the colors that really draw them in.

for all you Steampunk kids out there...

You want to know about steam engines and turbines..

This is the place! Everything is here !

I don't even know how to start about this one...

Its a complete working mini brick factory !!!!

Its all PLC controlled automation and just pumps out mini brick all day for an unknown reason but its amazing!!!! Kids stuck to the glass on this one...

One more shot of the Traub making parts in the visitor shop, all the machines run and they show you how they work!

I stayed with some good crew over in Munich. 

Clemens, who worked for Deckel Maho CNC and now is on his own making crazy CNC silicon cutting and laser etching machines was the one of the cool dudes that let me crash at his place.

The other super rad dude was Lorenz who also worked with Clemens on crazy CNC stuff but now works in Aerospace designing Satellites in Munich. Really cool to hang with these guys and realize that Germany is just like the USA and good machinists are hard to find anywhere....

I left Munich and headed to Austria to hang out with Greg and the rest of the Santa Cruz kids at the world cup mountain bike race. 

During some of the practice runs on Friday Greg grabbed a root in a super tight section and hyper-extended his knee which put him out for the weekend. 

Good for partying, but bad for racing

He ended up finishing 3rd overall in points and because of the epic win in South Africa, he kept his World Champ rainbow jersey. It ended up being a torn ACL which just the other day got taken care of but it doesn't sound like much fun right now for him.

I went back to Germany after World Cups and decieded I wanted to go to Stuttgart, home of Porsche and Benz to see what this city is all about. 

Like normal I fell in love with it... its like a modern fancy Detroit with lots of fast cars everywhere. 

My mission was to tour as much stuff as possible and just wonder until I got in trouble.

I some how got in to a very special place for a personal tour, I was so happy to get a tour...

All you have to do is walk around the building and jump the fence and bang on the window....

I love making stuff and this is one of those places in the world where making stuff is very important and doing it right is more important. Behind me is a big Schuler Automovtive 300 ton Stamping Press, one of the badass machines that almost all automaker relies on and they are not made far from Stuttgart. 

These big machines are one of the hearts of Detroit, the Schuler has been one of the big players for a long time in the sheet metal stamping business. If you have one in your shop that is a dead giveaway your a big player...

I ended up at Porsche the next morning... Searching for something other then a car...

I kinda had a feeling I might meet a lovely girl that was a cnc machinist and wisk her away to the USA.... Ha Ha, well Porsche did a good job at convincing me I would find her because they posted this photo of a model on a CNC lathe and had me so stoked I had to go get a personal tour of the full factory to find her...

Well..... At least I got a really special tour of the whole Porsche factory from Chris my buddy at Porsche....

I think it was well deserved tour because I traveled 5,000 miles to find this girl or some machinist chick, this Germany trip started with this photo and a dare from a friend to find her...

After a 14 hour stop in Amsterdam that I don't remember I was back in the USA!

I Love the good old USA.. !

While I was gone my brother had got most of the drawings done of all the trophies and I was really happy with them... time to make them!

The concept was done and the idea of colored crank arms

I scored this super huge chunk of Aluminium from a Navy Ship that was be fixed, it was left overs from building a motor mount so I figured it would be perfect. 

Gabe loading it on the K&T mill to cut it in to small blocks to run on the CNC. 

With small bite size blocks of the aluminum, I put the Bridgeport CNC to work cutting the crankarms while I moved on to getting other parts ready. 

Plus I scored a bunch of green lab coats in Germany that I love to wear.

Side one of the monster 250+mm cranks

Side 2 all cut off and ready to go to MetalCo anodizing

Once I got all the cranks done I was on to the bases made out of California Walnut.

My brother had made all the solidworks files for everything so I was able to do HSM works CAM toolpaths on everything so I could just hammer them out on the CNC and they would all be the same. 

BAM ! 

Red Bull Rampage Trophies 

Thanks to MetalCo anodize for doing the silver in a few hours, we did a silver ano with the tool paths showing, I wanted to leave them raw but when you photograph it the sliver looks so nice because it doesn't reflect. 

I always have Mr. Minnaar come over and make sure the trophies look good.

He has held more trophies then I will ever so his opinion counts. 

                                            

Viewers Choice 

First place - each trophy has colors for their places like bronze and silver. 

Welcome to Vegas!

My homies at Hertz rental cars throw it down for me with this sweet Mazda for 22 dollars fully insured... Good to have friends that read the blog and realize I like to smoke the tires in just about anything... I will keep the photos off the blog... Dares gone wrong...

I crashed out with the Rampage builders in the Rampage HQ house in Virgin, UT and woke in the morning to a fleet of 4 wheelers that would take us to the top.

Welcome to Zion National Park - Beautiful 

The fleet of machines that the builders uses to rip around and build everything for the event. 

Getting to see people jump the 72 foot gap blew my mind... 

Would you jump this at 8 am?

This is one of the other mega jumps they built..

So huge to no where you could even see unless you were half way off the jump

Mr Steve Blick from Oakley talking to the Camera crew of NBC about the crazy Oakley Sender jump we were sitting on... any person crazy enough to jump off it deserves a trophy

I had to cut it short on my trip and I only got to see the qualifying 

The phone was ringing off the hook for me to start the next project and my machines were still warm from this job so I jumped a flight that night and flew back to Oakland. 

Todd Barber of H5 Events - the man that makes Rampage happen on the left 

Kelly McGarry holding his 2 trophies on the right, Second place and Viewers Choice

This is his run below that earned him these bad boys... Well deserved !

This is what kind of run you have to hit in order to get the viewers choice award !

Thanks to my brother Jason ( Metal Morphosis Engineering) for helping me get these bad boys done on the design and Gabe like normal who stays up extra late to put things together.