Generation 5 Bike Pedal Development
We are back with updates on our bike pedal development with the generation 5 design. If you've been following along, you'll see a bunch of enhancements that we are making here to the generation 4 bike pedal design to improve things.
If you missed the previous posts, check them out here:
What Things We Improved
Jumping right into things - there were a number of items we identified that we wanted to improve going from generation #4 to generation #5 of the bicycle pedal design. To recap, these improvements were:
- Machine time was too long
- Spindle and end cap hex geometry
- Grease not installed
- O-rings not installed
- Screws as pins
- Spindle threads into cranks
From this list above, we were able to fix all but item #5. And, there is a good reason as to why we decided to bypass #5 that I will get into below.
1 - Improving Bicycle Pedal Machine Time
We took a look at our rounded design for the shaft holder portion of the pedal and reconfigured this to be an octagon. This allowed for a flat portion where your foot rests and beveled edges with tightly controlled angles which match up with standard CNC tooling. The result is that we were able to cut machining time by more than half!
See below for some pics of the new generation 5 pedal design we created:
2 - Spindle and End Cap Hex Geometry
As mentioned, the way we were making the spindle end hex and end cap hex portion was not great. We used a larger drill size, and this causes the hex to strip out when installing with allen wrenches. So, we went with a smaller drill as well as increasing the depth of the hex to allow for less shear stress on each of the hex sides. They are much improved!
3 & 4 - Grease and O-rings!
This is a simple one - we just installed the grease and the o-rings like we should have the first time around! Since we now had these materials in-hand, this was no trouble. Everything fit together nicely, so that was good to find the no further changes here should be required!
5 - Screws as Pins
We plan to continue using screws as the "pins" in our bike pedals. This is because they are easy to install and easy to replace if they get worn or bent. One thing we noticed as we were testing the Gen4 pedals is that two of the screws backed out. We initially planned to install these screws with Loctite on the threads to prevent them backing out.
After we thought about it more, we decided we wanted to provide customers with MULTIPLE lengths of pins so that they could tailor their pedals to be either concave, truly flat, or convex. So, we are planning to ship pedals with NO pins installed. We will then have instructions that guide customers through how to install pins to give them the custom fit they are looking for.
The downside of this idea is that it will be difficult to provide Loctite to end customers without it adding a large cost. A standard bottle of Loctite is over $20, so we need to think of a better solution here to give customers the ability to use Loctite to keep their pins from backing out while not costing an arm and a leg! More to come here as we think through this challenge.
6 - Spindle Thread Issues
As mentioned in the Gen4 Pedal Testing article, we had some issues with the threaded ends of the spindles that screwed into the cranks. This time, we took special care to machine the spindle threads correctly. We did not need to make any design changes, we just needed to ensure these were 100% correct during CNC machining on the lathe.
Gen5 Pedal Prototypes Finished with Machining
With all of these improvements to the design, we were ready to produce alpha versions of our generation 5 bike pedal. See below for some pictures of the Gen5 bike pedals being machined and finished alpha prototypes fully assembled!
Next Step for Bike Pedal Development
Now that we have some Gen5 bike pedals created and built, we can move onto testing. In the next article, we will detail out the testing of the new alpha Gen5 pedals, get some sweet pictures of them, hopefully a video or two, and we can get some focus group testing by giving them to some other riders to get their thoughts and feelings! Check back soon for the next update!!
In the meantime, if you're reading this several weeks or months from when this was posted, check out our PEDAL section of the Moongate Cycles store and grab your pedals now!
