Revved Industries, the manufacturer behind Guerrilla Gravity mountain bikes, has successfully secured their first patent for the manufacturing and production process behind their innovative carbon technology, Revved Carbon. The patent is a critical step towards Revved Industries' efforts to reduce manufacturing's global carbon footprint by allowing for nearshore, in-region manufacturing without reliance on low-cost labor locations, and starting with their flagship location in Denver, CO.
The Science Behind the Patents
The Revved Industries team got rolling in 2017 with the filing of the initial patent application. The recently allowed patent covers the creation of hollow, structural products created from fiber-reinforced laminates. Before Revved developed the technology, the only products made from modern thermoplastic composites with full length fibers were panel shapes, or components bonded from multiple pieces. At the core of the technology is a novel fusing process that creates a unified and structural, long fiber structure from the subassembly laminates.
"Developing Revved Carbon began as a search to solve the challenges we saw with traditional carbon fiber manufacturing: concentration in low wage regions due to the amount of hand labor, inherent fragility to impacts, and little to no options for recycling. With the materials chosen for Revved Carbon,here was no method to create a hollow structural part like a mountain bike frame, which required us to figure it out. - Matt Giaraffa, CTO and Co-Founder"
Revved Industries has also developed their own proprietary machinery to utilize the production methods outlined in the patent and paired them with economical upstream and downstream machinery. Most thermoplastic machinery is currently designed for aerospace applications, and come with multi-million dollar price tags, so this machinery is tailored for the price points within the cycling industry. When compared to the long-fiber 3D printing methods also coming to market, Revved Industries' manufacturing technology offers advantages in high volume production environments due to fast cycle times.
The Future is Revved
With the issuance of the patent, it's unsurprising that Revved Industries has ambitious plans for future expansion. This patent is the first of others in the works to be filed around novel manufacturing technologies related to creating products out of carbon fiber reinforced thermoplastic. In December, both Revved Industries and Guerrilla Gravity moved into a new location to house their factory and attached GG showroom. At 30,000 square feet, the new space is 5 times larger than their original location, allowing them to dramatically increase their capabilities and increase capacity on the current manufacturing line.
"Thanks to relentless hard work from our team, a lot has changed in the three years since our humble beginnings in a small shop in the shadow of Mile High stadium. We've grown from a small garage band to a small army of almost 50. We have a great team in place to help us leverage these new technologies to bring manufacturing back to the US. - Will Montague, CEO and Co-Founder"
Revved Industries views their efforts as part of a growing movement to diversify global supply chains - something that will help prevent bottlenecks like the one impacting the cycling industry today. Between domestic manufacturing and optimized production, Revved products will see dramatically reduced time to market, transit costs, and inventory management complexities, such as carrying costs and warehousing.
The US-made carbon is a benefit to both the consumer and planet due to its increased impact resistance, and therefore lengthened product lifespan. Revved Industries has been targeting waste reduction from both ends of the life cycle; by first making their carbon longlasting, and second by developing methods to reuse "drop" material from the manufacturing process to move towards a zero-waste operation.
"Traditional thermoset composites can only be formed once. The drop material is waste, and to recycle it, the epoxy must be chemically removed, and then new resin must be impregnated onto the fibers--a solution that is not very practical, nor economical. With Revved, the drop material can simply be reheated and reformed into a new part without chemically stripping and re-adding resin. -Matt"
While Revved is currently producing frames, they have some exciting R&D projects underway as they build towards becoming an OEM partner for the cycling industry, and beyond.
More info: RevvedIndustries.com
