Good news, affordable race bike frameset fans. The Kinesis Aithein, which we've been following with interest over the past few months, is now almost ready for shipping. The frames are expected to ship next month, with a price tag of £649.99 for the frame and fork.
Kinesis are one of the companies at the forefront of Aluminium manufacturing in the cycle industry. They've been pushing the development of new processes for forming alloy tubesets and their new superplastic forming (SPF) uses higher temperatures and lower pressures to allow thinner-walled constructions than hydroforming. Kinesis expect the final weight of the Aithein frame to be around 1,200g for a 56cm, light enough to build to the UCI weight limit without much bother.
We first caught up with Dom from Kinesis at the start of the year, when he showed us the prototypes for the Aithein, and Mat got to take a look at the final pre-production samples when he was out in Taipei last month. Now the frames are complete, with an anodised finish and laser-etched decals. They'll be available in black or gaudy orange.
Head tube is asymmetric with traditional external cable routing
It has an asymmetric seat tube too, and a BB386EVO bottom bracket shell
An Antigravity Seat Tube should help on the climbs, eh...
The die motif on the brake bridge was originally a joke, but made it through to production
Laser etched decals are fairly minimal and look smart
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36 comments
go on road.cc do a comparison with the Kinesis carbon frames if you can.
My bike has the die feature. So was this copied from Cinelli or was it originally somebody else's idea?
Pentti: Eh?
http://i.imgur.com/XdhIG8L.jpg
The die on the brake bridge. I wondered where this idea originated.
Pentti: Hahah! Wow!! I didn't realise that someone else had done this, it was just an idea that I played around with and then decided looked cool, so we put it into production.
I have the 5 on top and the 2 underneath, because the brake hole is supposed to take the place of the dot for the '1'.
Which frame is that that you have?
Cinelli experience. I must say that the cube part on the brake bridge looks like a die, so I can see how the idea came to light. I bet the Aithein looks great in orange.
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