Bicycle accessory ideas (Kickstarter style)

davel wrote:

HowardR wrote:

I’d be tempted to suggest that the areas that present the greatest potential to the world of ‘U.K’ cycling are the infrastructure/culture in which cycling sits &  electrically assisted bikes. Get those ‘fixed’ to the extent where cars are seen as massively overbuilt invalid carriages they are and you’ll be on to a good thing.

Amen. What sort of engineering are you doing, wellsprop? Design an app to relentlessly spam all MPs with stats and footage of cyclists dying on UK roads juxtaposed with the relative harmony in our near neighbours and I'll dedicate a statue* to you. *or at least a drawing.

Haha, that sounds like a fantastic app to me

I'm doing Aerospace Engineering, design CAD and CAM pathway. Designing is my interest!

Mungecrundle wrote:

A quote attributed to Henry Ford that I quite like.

"If I had asked people what they wanted, they would have said 'faster horses'"

Good market research is a useful though limited tool, and you will soon find that a group, 'cyclists' for example, that on the surface might seem to be fairly homogoneous in fact have very different views on what they would like. We are also somewhat notorious for our conservatism, just look at how long and how much gnashing of teeth has been caused by the introduction of new ideas from clip in shoes, brifters, carbon frames to disc brakes and electronic shifting.

I suspect that the most successful recent products for cyclists are those created by cycling enthusiasts who identified a product that they couldn't find. New technologies such as rapid prototyping with 3d printing enabled them to visualise and develop a product to the point where they could approach a manufacturer or crowd source to set up their own manufacture which is no trivial task. My advice to you is to become knowledgeable about manufacturing processes and modern materials technology, especially transferable technologies from outside your primary field that may be appropriate. Multidisciplinary teams can be very powerful generators of ideas, so make friends with your Chemist, Biologist and Electronics contemporaries.

Some probably nonsense examples;

How about 'growing' forks, frames or other components from organic sources. Some high end packaging is actually grown from fungal hyphea. Or how about the manufacture of jet turbine blades from a single crystal? Hugely expensive but who knows if that could be transferable to other high end bicycle applications? What about smart materials? wind cheating, dirt resistant nano structured paint finishes or self healing composites for example.

My personal favourite similar to ideas already mentioned are; smaller, lighter, cheaper, high def, vibration cancalling, auto recording, long battery life cameras.

Good luck with your studies, the world is a better place thanks to engineers and scientists. Just don't expect the recognition or reward you deserve.

The camera idea seems to be very popular! Hopefully Garmin and GoPro are paying attention

I think additive manufcaturing is going to totally revolutionise consumerism, much like industrialisation did. You'll be able to buy a product which perfroms the same as any of the same product, yet it could look totally different. I.e. cars, when additive manufacturing becomes a big big thing you could have the body work printed for your car in any shape you so wished, yet it'd drive the same as any other.

I've already dabbled with 3D printing brackets, chain catchers and clamps for my bicycle, it's so so easy once you know how to use CAD, I can knock up a design in a few hours and pick up a few fully printed the next day!

Your final comment made me chuckle I must admit as I know just how true it is! Rewards for engineers XD Engineers tend to be a funny bunch who get lots of satisfaction and reward from making stuff work - I just like it when all my equations cancel correctly, SolidWorks gives me no rebuild errors and MATLAB works