Comments on: Delta 7 Sports IsoTruss Bicycle Frame

By: chris

chris — Fri, 01 Feb 2008 13:44:18 +0000

All I can say is “cheese grator” or should I say “leg grator”

If you ride a mountain bike, you know that you will take a digger or two, and I certainly wouldn’t want that in between my legs.

By: John

John — Wed, 30 Jan 2008 03:41:06 +0000

Brigham Young University isn’t exactly the best technical college (excellent drama department, and obviously the only stop for mormon theology), and they’re not equipped.

They’re got a solid gold patent on their hands here, and they use it… for a bicycle frame.

It should be used for wind turbines, airships, airplanes, spaceships, radio towers, buildings… getting Isotruss into mass production could makes any light structure easy as pie. How many places do you think steel beams are used? They just don’t have the money or connections to scale up the technology so fast.

So we get abominations like this, blatant grabs for money utilizing the “fame” of an unknown technology. This is the equal of Nanosolar’s CIGS solar tech, and would be developed just as fast if it had come from Stanford instead of BYU.

By: Walt

Walt — Sat, 26 Jan 2008 14:41:22 +0000

I’d like to know how this material performs when that tubular grid takes an impact from the top, side or bottom. If if the sides of a couple of those little triangles deform or break, the stresses of riding will all be focused on the remaining structural elements. I’d be more confident with tubing, whether steel, aluminum, carbon fiber or titanium.

By: kneeslider

kneeslider — Sat, 26 Jan 2008 12:58:23 +0000

I believe the bike frame idea came around because the grad students working on the development of the IsoTruss system built one as a demonstration of one potential use, along with some towers of various sorts. The frame the students built had a plastic covering over the tubes to keep the mud out. I don’t know if the one above does the same.

IsoTruss may be better suited to signposts and towers than bikes but they’re still trying to come up with ideas. If you follow the IsoTruss link below the article you’ll see some of the other things they’ve been thinking of doing with it.

By: flumpies

flumpies — Sat, 26 Jan 2008 05:44:44 +0000

i KNOW!!! the mudis going to kill that thing. no matter what you do mud is going to be a nightmare. what does it cost? whatever it is…its not worth it. vaporware. boring. the guy who invented it never rode a bike through mud i am sure…. oh hold on my spleen hurts… 2.75 pounds…who cares, my frame weighs just five pounds and its from way back in ’96…. there! my spleen feels better!