Tomorrow Is Already Yesterday

Friday Location:  Seven  |  Studio     ||     8:15 am – 8:40 pm

• Product Design:  ISP-ness:  I’m updating Seven Cycles’ Integrated Seat Post design so it’s more versatile and a bit lighter.  The new system is going to be a lot simpiler to manufacture, too.  This is long overdue.
  

  Seven Cycles’ Integrated Seat Posts waiting patiently

• Product Design:  Steel.  I’ve been working on a new steel idea for a while now.  I’m hopeful that I can do a bit of prototyping in the next couple weeks.
• Graphic Design:  Skunk is doing a second draft of the Seven Cycles kit.  I’m late on this but I’ve been working on too many other kits.  Capo is working with us on this project so I’m confident we’ll see the final kits quickly.

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Thursday Location:  Seven  |  Studio      ||     8:40 am – 9:25 pm

• 

  My frustrated mechanic’s bench. All the parts that don’t fit.

  Race:  Rapha g-Race updates.  Some changes but it’s definitely happening this weekend.  Course changes and team member changes.  Patria Lanfranchi racing on the tandem team, for example.  The tandem team lost three riders within a 24-hour period.  Pamela and John scrambled to find replacements but Patria, Rebecca Fetner, and Dena Cohen all stepped up.

  [click to continue…]

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Wednesday Location:  Seven     ||     8:10 am – 9:35 pm

• Project: 1″ Chainstays.  Seven Cycles has been designing frames with 1″ chain stays for a while.  We’ve been working on broadening the frame design options with our 1″ stays.  Today we iterated our road racing design.  These stays are more than 2x stiffer than our most common 7/8″ stays.  These are definitely not right for everyone.  But, on some applications they make a big difference.  We’ll be introducing a few more variants throughout the rest of the season.
  

  Seven Cycles’ latest 1″ chainstay design in production.

• Project:  Fatigue Test Carbon.  We’ve just started a new round of carbon frame testing.  In this round we’re working on a few surface treatment idea.  I’m fairly confident that the results will be very positive.  We’re running a few rounds of full frame tests and we’ll evaluate bell curve fatigue comparisons.  Testing starts on Monday.
• Project G Private Label:  Working on another new private label conversation. This one is a bit trickier than some of the others we’ve evaluated.

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Location:  Studio     ||     6:45 am – 8:50 pm

• Project:  Website 2013:  Took some time to map out some new aspects of the site.  User navigation in a nontraditional sense.  While we’ll have a relatively traditional nav bar we’re also incorporating some user interface aspects that we’ve not done before.  All low-tech solutions – because I’m involved.  Also working with Skunk on the mobile version of the site.  We’re having some issues with touch screen compatibly.  Skunk think’s he’s got it solved but it changes our basic site a bit.  We’re definitely working in html5 even though it’s clearly still “under development.”

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Location:  Seven     ||     8:40 am – 11:05 pm

• Project:  It’s aparent that Seven Cycles’ Zero Defect Initiative is not working as well as it has for the past 10-years since we originally put it in place.  We’re not quite at 6 simga quality.  As with every system, standards migrate over time.   Systems either adjust to those changes or they don’t. Entropy unchecked checkmates. Most of Seven’s systems have adjusted, not all have.  We’re closing those gaps and updating some of the systems.
• Product Design:  Updating our three types of titanium seat posts.  27.2, 30.9 and 31.8 mm diameters.  Tuning the 30.9 to make it a bit lighter.  We’re getting more and more interest in these.
• Bike Race:  The Ride Studio Cafe Racer Endurance Team did an amazing job this past weekend.  They crushed the Green Mountain Double Century course record – that they set last year.  More details to come.

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