Ampt Engineering - Ti pedals

Dales Cannon

lightbrain about 4pm
Staff member
Pat's just set me straight, this one's just a printed plastic platform for pics and visual. Investment cast Ti pre-production samples are due in March.
I'm gonna have a spindle and bushing set in my hot little hands tomorrow to have a closer look at. :D
Curiosity only... using 3D printed model that is melted out of the mould or a 3D printed mould? Was looking to do printed models for another thingy, gave up because of surface finish roughness. Not an issue for a pedal. Vacuum casting presumably.
 

merc-blue

Likes Bikes and Dirt
Interestingly, we have a thread about the "collapse" of the bike industry, primarily due to overpriced, niche and redundant products,
and here we have an investment cast Ti flat pedal. These look cool, maybe I am a little concerned about the low-contact area.

Either way with the cost of living and being on the edge of recession it is an interesting time to be bringing new bougie products to the market
 

Ampto

Squid
Hi All,

Think this is the first forum discussion about these or my work in general, i’ll take this as a small win!


3d printed titanium in a highly stressed component that connects you to the bike... What could possibly go wrong....
They are vacuum investment cast, you are partially correct, 3D printed titanium has come a long way and has it’s uses, but this isn’t one of them, not so much do to the slight reduction in material properties, but cost, once you are talking more than a handful of pedals, 3D printing is not worth the expense.


Did he use one whole fat bastard for loading forces?
Fat bastard and more, designed to exceed ISO 4210-8 which is 1500N per pedal (152kg), that’s is static load. Dynamic load i’ve tried to be some what conservative and temper my weight ambitions
Curiosity only... using 3D printed model that is melted out of the mould or a 3D printed mould? Was looking to do printed models for another thingy, gave up because of surface finish roughness. Not an issue for a pedal. Vacuum casting presumably.
They will get made the traditional way, aluminium dies, injection molded sacrificial wax patterns which are then ceramic coated and vacuum cast. I did early on print some on a resin printer with wax lost casting compatible resin that could be directly coated and burnt out (design was different back then), but finding suppliers that wanted to work with you to cast from them was practically impossible and once you got into any volumes, like 20 or more in a batch, the extra cost of the printer, resins etc, didn’t make it worth exploring further. Good learning exercise though…

Interestingly, we have a thread about the "collapse" of the bike industry, primarily due to overpriced, niche and redundant products,
and here we have an investment cast Ti flat pedal. These look cool, maybe I am a little concerned about the low-contact area.

Either way with the cost of living and being on the edge of recession it is an interesting time to be bringing new bougie products to the market
Yes and no, there is always a market for high end niche products, always someone wanting something different or bespoke to set themselves apart from the rest. In booming times those products are more accessible and in downtimes the market may dry up to a certain extent. This is more of a personal project to be honest, I want to design something out of titanium as i‘ve never been given the opportunity to do so in my career, I have a reasonable amount of experience in high performing components coming from the motorsport industry but now I’m in managament I rarely get to use them and I found a suitable component that i could see some potential in. If i get some of them out into the world successfully and a small handful of individuals really appreciate them, I’ll call that a win I can take to my grave :)

Thanks for the interest all, If you have more questions, fire away. I’ve been pretty lazy with my website and social media about these, as my personal business is only a side gig, so I’ll get around to posting dimensions, weights etc. Best place to follow along is instagram for now. I also have some other components I’m looking into, following a similar design mythology to these, but those will be a slow burn, these took me 2 years on and off!

Cheers - Patrick
 

Ampto

Squid
Interestingly, we have a thread about the "collapse" of the bike industry, primarily due to overpriced, niche and redundant products,
and here we have an investment cast Ti flat pedal. These look cool, maybe I am a little concerned about the low-contact area.

Either way with the cost of living and being on the edge of recession it is an interesting time to be bringing new bougie products to the market
Oh, a key word you have mentioned there is overpriced which i overlooked. I’m not looking at making mega dollars on these, I’m against money grab “niche-not so niche“ products in general. I’ll offer these at cost + a reasonable margin and sell them directly from my site, so no dealer margin allowances included in the cost etc, to make them as accessible as possible. I’m still having an internal debate with myself on what a “reasonable margin“ is, but I’d like to make my money back on the tooling in the first batch if possible (so net zero if i sell a complete batch, which at this stage is 50 pairs). They are on the high end of the pedal pricebook for sure, but probably not as expensive as you might guess. I’ll disclosure that after I’ve tested the sample batch coming in March.
 

merc-blue

Likes Bikes and Dirt
Oh, a key word you have mentioned there is overpriced.
I just want to clarify. nothing about redundant pricey products was specifically targeted at you.

I remember in early-mid 2010s, I was doing a bunch of work with data/telemetry on bikes and kind of parked the idea, thinking nobody would pay for that. We had a pretty robust setup for telemetry and a number of software tools developed for interpreting data, and I kinda walked away thinking it wasn't market viable,
It wasn't long after dusty dynamics popped up, and now is pretty common to see DAQ on bikes under development or at a high level of competition,
a good example of why it is probably wise to ignore my input.
 

Ampto

Squid
I just want to clarify. nothing about redundant pricey products was specifically targeted at you.

I remember in early-mid 2010s, I was doing a bunch of work with data/telemetry on bikes and kind of parked the idea, thinking nobody would pay for that. We had a pretty robust setup for telemetry and a number of software tools developed for interpreting data, and I kinda walked away thinking it wasn't market viable,
It wasn't long after dusty dynamics popped up, and now is pretty common to see DAQ on bikes under development or at a high level of competition,
a good example of why it is probably wise to ignore my input.
Yeah I figured haha, your points are valid though with some products on the market for sure

Cheers!
 
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Ampto

Squid
Genuine question, what's to stop some bloke on aliexpress simply copy-pasta the design?
Nothing really, normally they go for the quick $$$ items and luckily since a fair portion of the cost is a specialised material, it’s unlikely they could undercut by a margin that is worth it. But like many things, it’s all about brand, customer relationships, customer experience, quality, service etc that sets you apart from some random on Aliexpress. There isn’t really much you can do as a brand to protect yourselves, NDA‘s, patents (doesn’t apply here) etc, they are only worth it if you are prepared to pay for legal fees to fight them, none of them guarantee protection.
 
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Dales Cannon

lightbrain about 4pm
Staff member
As above. Investment casting especially something like titanium isn't a quick and easy process. Lots of hours in making an aluminium mould and the multiple drippings of silica media, baking the mould and draining the wax all too hard for most people. Mate does old car stuff like door handles, window winders etc etc. No competition.
 
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Calvin27

Eats Squid
Nothing really, normally they go for the quick $$$ items and luckily since a fair portion of the cost is a specialised material, it’s unlikely they could undercut by a margin that is worth it.
Yep ok just actually read up on the lost wax method of casting and that sounds very involved. I rekon you're at least up for a post in the post your garage thread lol - thats a fair bit of kit you need to get that working consistently!
 

Ampto

Squid
Yep ok just actually read up on the lost wax method of casting and that sounds very involved. I rekon you're at least up for a post in the post your garage thread lol - thats a fair bit of kit you need to get that working consistently!
I wish, the casting is being done by a specialist, way out of my depth, titanium is highly reactive and there are only a handful of places around the world that have the equipment to do it. If you‘re curious, check out how it is refined, it‘s even more involved.
 

Mattyp

Cows go boing
Not sure where I first saw this, maybe here, but it's an interesting read...
 

Jabubu

let you google that for me
I’ve only got 5 sample sets in production, 1 set will probably get destructive testing so that leaves 4 sets to share around. Hindsight I should have got 10 sets! :oops: I’m hoping to hit up some of the bigger MTB events and have a bike with them fitted that people can have a try on.
Bring a set to Crankworx in Cairns and see how they fare on the jumps ;)
 
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