Loopwheels put a spring in your cycling

When you have plenty of bicycle to work with, such as is the case with a mountain bike, it’s not such a big deal to design it with front and rear suspension. When the bicycle in question is a diminutive folding city bike, however, it gets a bit trickier. That’s why UK industrial designer Sam Pearce has created Loopwheels. Instead of relying on a suspension fork and rear shock, it lets the bike’s 20-inch wheels absorb the bumps.Each wheel incorporates a regular hub, with a hub brake and hub gearing. Instead of spokes, however, three looped carbon composite springs run from the hub to the rim. Whenever the wheel hits a bump in the road, the energy is absorbed by those springs.

This causes the hub to momentarily dip down within the wheel by up to 45 millimeters, so it’s actually a bit off-center until the springs flex back into their regular state. For this reason, the wheels will only work on bikes that already have sufficient space between the fork/frame and the tire – otherwise the bike would be hitting its own tires when the springs compressed.

Loopwheels come in front- and rear-specific versions, one of the key differences being that the springs in the front wheel are twice as compliant as those in the back. This is (presumably) to help keep the wheel that does the steering from being knocked and bounced around, plus it compensates for the fact that more of the rider’s weight tends to be centered over the rear wheel.

Each wheel reportedly weighs about 300 grams (10.5 oz) more than a comparable spoked wheel.

Instead of relying on a suspension fork and rear shock, the Loopwheel lets the bike’s 20-i...

According to Pearce, one of the advantages of Loopwheels is the fact that unlike a suspension fork, they can absorb shocks delivered not just from underneath or above but also from the front (as might happen when running into a curb head-on). He also admits that many other inventors have come up with designs for wheels with tangential suspension over the past hundred years or so, although he believes that today’s modern materials will allow his to work where others have proved impractical.

Pearce is now raising production funds for his Loopwheels, on Kickstarter. A pledge of £195 (US$297) will get you a front wheel (which can be used with a conventional rear wheel), while £420 ($640) will get you a front and rear set – when and if the funding goal is met. A 26-inch model for mountain bikes is also in the works.

Comments

Nerf Vulcan Sentry Gun tracks targets and avoids friendly fire

Anyone who plays video games will know that few things protect an area like a well-placed sentry gun. In the real world, though, even a person's bedroom or office could use a little protection sometimes, which is why one designer has built the Nerf Vulcan Sentry Gun. Using a custom program and some servos, the sentry can automatically locate targets and unleash a stream of foam darts at over seven times the usual speed, while keeping its owner out of the crosshairs. Britt Liv Ulrike Michelsen, a chemical and biological engineering student from Germany, designed and constructed the sentry using mostly basic electronics and some plywood. This isn't the first time she's modified a Nerf gun, but building this robotic turret is arguably her most ambitious project to date. Luckily, the Nerf Vulcan already operates using an electric motor, so controlling the actual firing mechanism through a computer was just a matter of connecting it directly to an Arduino Uno and a laptop. ...

Students crash rockets to develop new asteroid sample collection technique

In what at first glance seems like a terrible sense of direction, in March students from the University of Washington fired rockets from kites and balloons at an altitude of 3,000 ft (914 m) straight into the ground at Black Rock, Nevada: a dry lake bed in the desert 100 mi (160 km) north of Reno. This may seem like the ultimate in larking about, but it's actually a serious effort to develop new ways of collecting samples from asteroids. The test was part of the “Sample Return Systems for Extreme Environments” project. The idea is to find cheaper, more efficient ways of collecting samples from asteroids and hazardous areas on Earth, such as volcanoes and nuclear disaster zones, by using penetrators instead of soft landers or ground crews to hammer out sample cores. According to the team, this would result in lower cost than soft landing techniques by reducing the velocity and vehicle mass needed to gather the sample, minimizing damage on impact, as well as being mechanically s...

Review: i-H2GO hydrogen-powered remote-control car

At the end of last month, Horizon Fuel Cell Technologies began shipments of its latest hydrogen fuel cell-powered remote-control toy car, the i-H2GO . Like its predecessor, the H2GO , it runs on hydrogen obtained from user-supplied water. The main thing that's new about the i-H2GO, however, is the fact that it is now controlled using a free app on the user's existing smartphone. I got my hands on an early production model, mainly just so that I could truthfully say "I've driven a fuel cell car." Like the H2GO, the new car comes with an included Refueling Station. The user pours purified water into that device, and it proceeds to electrolyze the H2O, separating it into H and O – hydrogen and oxygen. A plunger on the station rises as hydrogen fills its temporary holding compartment. The user then connects the car to the station using a built-in hose, and manually pumps the hydrogen from the station into the car. The car's fuel cell subsequently combines...

ANBARASUASOKAN

Search This Blog