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Dirt Rag Articles
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We're Jammin'
Early morning rendezvous in the supermarket parking lot, and I'm surprised to see the five Dirt Rag staffers already in the van have left the shotgun seat open for me. No complaints as the elder statesman creaks into the bucket seat, and the silver rocket roars toward the Pennsylvania turnpike for the two-hour scamper to Bedford, PA for our Cannondale factory tour.
Sign-in, introductions, safety glasses—check, check and check. Let's see what we shall see. (Ed note: to get the most out of this article, you'll want to click the hyperlinked text to view related photos, which are conveniently collected in this Dirt Rag Gallery).
For Starters
Flexible manufacturing is an overriding theme at the Cannondale factory. Bicycles are produced in small batches of between 1 and 10 total frames. Each manufacturing operation utilizes flexible tooling to facilitate quick change-over between jobs. The concept is to stay light on the feet and ready to respond to customer orders as rapidly as possible. We'll see direct evidence of this flexible manufacturing philosophy as our tour continues.
Our first stop is in the incoming materials warehouse, where we get a quick look at the raw tubing, extrusions, forgings and billet material that it takes to build a bicycle. Cannondale tells us that before the incoming material is released to production, it must past quality checks to assure that it meets critical specifications. Nothing earth shattering there—just good old fashioned quality control in action.
CNC Machines, and Lasers and Welders—Oh My!
Immediately adjacent to the incoming materials warehouse we find Cannondale's bank of CNC machines humming along quite nicely, thankyouverymuch. Cannondale machines between 60 and 100 parts per bike in their Bedford factory. One might wonder why they don't just order the parts and have somebody else make them. The answer is that many of the parts have tolerances tighter than outside machine shops are willing and/or able to produce on a consistent basis. Machining in house results in better quality.
A bit further down the line, we watch as those raw tubes from the warehouse are being cut in a laser machining operation. We aren't allowed to take pictures of the operation, but after watching the laser do such a quick and slick job of cutting complex shapes in tubes, I can tell you that I can't imagine doing the job sans laser. The laser cranks through its task of of mitering tubes and cutting holes and slots in them—with impressive speed.
Speaking of slots, Cannondale's "slot and tab" assembly technique is a prime example of flexible manufacturing. Tabs cut into tubes align with strategically placed slots cut into the mating tubes, and the frameset sort of "snaps together" into alignment for tack welding. With the slots and tabs holding the tubes in alignment, Cannondale is able to use much simpler (and more flexible) fixtures when they tack weld the tubes together. Tack welding is a pre-assembly step—prior to the full welding operation that actually joins the tubes.
Welding: sparks flying, molten metal, the smell of ozone in the morning—aaaaah gotta love it! If I had to identify the heart and soul of the Cannondale factory, I'd cast my vote for the welding operation. A total of 43 welders, each capable of producing up to a dozen bikes per day, fabricate every Cannondale bicycle sold worldwide, and every frame is trackable back to the welder who produced it.
And now a word about Cannondale's hallmark smooth weld bead. It's a common misconception that said weld bead requires sanding to achieve its smooth finish. In fact, the weld bead is smooth, right out of the weld booth. The smooth finish is created by a two-pass, puddle welding technique that Cannondale employs. Cannondale points out that their welding technique produces better penetration than welds that exhibit the typical "stack of dimes" appearance. Better penetration results in a stronger joint. Furthermore, the high and low spots on stack of dimes weld beads may act as stress risers—a potential compromise of weld durability.
Finishing Touches
The minor amount of sanding that the weld beads do receive is done to remove weld spatter and slight surface imperfections. As a matter of routine, the head tubes and bottom brackets are re-reamed to clean out their bore after welding.
Cannondale uses 6061 aluminum alloy in all of its bicycles. There are sexier, ultra high strength, aluminum alloys available, but Cannondale favors 6061 due to its superior formability, weldability and machinability. Manufacturability is important when you're running a factory that is capable of cranking out around 400 bikes per day. Thanks to the magic of heat treatment, the 6061 alloy can reach sufficiently high strength values.
Speaking of heat treatment, each welded frame receives an initial stress-relief heat treatment, followed by a frame alignment. Then the frame gets a second, metallurgical heat treatment that leads to the 6061 alloy developing its high strength properties. A second frame alignment is performed immediately after the second heat treatment, while the frame is relatively ductile (before the alloy has had time to age to its final high-strength condition.)
At this point frames may either continue into production or go into the unfinished goods warehouse where Cannondale keeps a stock of unfinished frames. As orders come in, batches of the unfinished frames are released from the warehouse into production. Yet another example of Cannondale's flexible manufacturing philosophy.
Frames continuing along the production line go into a prep process that chemically cleans and electrostatically charges them prior to painting. After painting the frames are inspected and decals are applied. At this point the frames are ready for assembly.
Parts? Yeah, They Got Parts.
In the assembly area the batch of finished frames (on a given shop order) meets up with a batch of parts that will be used to produce a batch of complete bicycles. Cranks, wheels, handlebars, headsets, cables, and all the other components are installed and adjusted by factory workers. After the build is completed the bikes are partially disassembled and boxed for shipment to the customer. European orders are exceptions to the rule. They get shipped finished frames—for assembly in the destination country.
Speaking of parts, Cannondale builds all their wheels in the Bedford factory, with the exception of "integrated" designs such as Mavic, Shimano and Zipp. One group of workers pre-assembles the spokes into the hubs and passes them on to another work station where wheelbuilders lace them to the appropriate rims before feeding the wheels into a two-step series of robotic wheel truing machines. All wheels get a final check and truing by human hands.
Cannondale does not allow visitors to view their carbon fiber manufacturing area in the Bedford Factory, but we saw plenty of evidence that the folks in the super secret area are keeping busy. Evidence like batches of road forks waiting to be assembled onto frames, and gobs of carbon Lefty forks. Cannondale manufacturers all of their house brand carbon fiber products in Bedford, with the exception of monocoque bicycle frames, which are produced to Cannondale specifications by an off-shore contractor with expertise in building bicycle frames.
The Bedford factory also manufactures all of Cannondale's house brand suspension systems, including their Headshok and Lefty forks. In a clean and well-lighted room that seemed more like a laboratory than a factory, we watch workers installing the guts of Lefty forks. Cannondale tells us that 100 percent of their forks are "cycle tested" (to verify that everything is hunky dory) before they are assembled onto bicycles.
Testing, Testing, One, Two...
Speaking of testing, no trip to Bedford would be complete without a visit to Cannondale's stress analysis laboratory (ESAL). This is where Cannondale "torture tests" frames and components in the name of science. Cannondale uses data from impact, strength and fatigue tests to help them build stronger and more durable frames and parts. They also test their outside vendors' components—and even share test results with vendors, to help them build better parts. They don't want any of the parts on a Cannondale to fail, regardless of the manufacturer.
With their instrumented bike, Cannondale's ESAL engineers have taken mechanical testing and data collection out of the laboratory and into the field. The instrumented bike collects data from attached strain gages and accelerometers. Data is collected while riding the bike on local trails, and sometimes while the bike is ridden into a brick wall at up to 15 mph. I wonder how they recruit volunteers for that test? In all seriousness, the test data helps engineers understand the stress and strain bikes experience under real conditions, which in turn helps them design stronger and more durable frames and components.
In Summary
To be sure, our whirlwind tour barely scratched the surface of the blood, sweat and tears that go into cranking out 400 bicycle a day, but I hope you found this little peek behind the curtain entertaining and educational.
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| Comment from John on 2009-06-28 |
| Any word on whether the laid off cannondale employees will start up their own operation? Hope so! I'd be interested! |
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| Comment from Bev on 2009-04-03 |
| hurry & tour.
Cannondale realigning, will cut 200 jobs
Cannondale Bicycle Corp. officials announced Thursday that Cycling Sports Group (formerly Cannondale Sports Group) will reduce its workforce and shift its existing manufacturing operation in Bedford toward becoming a bicycle testing laboratory. We'll be going from 300 current employees to approximately 100 over the next 12 to 15 months, said Ron Lombardi, senior vice president and chief financial officer for Cannondale. We announced this information to our employees today (Thursday), and the first round of layoffs will occur in early June. The bicycle frame manufacturing will be going to Taiwan. The Bedford facility will focus on final bicycle and Headshok assembly CNC (computer numerical control) machining testing and quality control bicycle warranty repair inside sales, services and distribution and customer support and administration, including a new call center onsite. |
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| Comment from Ron on 2007-12-11 |
| Great step by step explanation there. Keep up the good work. |
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