Triangle’s kick-starts robotized aluminium alloy frame welding for bicycles on industrial scale

<p>Triangle&rsquo;s, the bike maker from Portugal, is on its way to becoming Europe's first bike manufacturer to produce aluminium bicycle and e-bike frames on an industrial scale. The robots that will be doing the welding job at the plant are scheduled for end of July arrival and production run of the first batch of aluminium bicycle and e-bike frames are planned for October this year. <br /><br />Triangle&rsquo;s has set May 2018 as the targeted timeline by when its bicycle business unit named Cycling Equipments SA will go into full operation and in high gear. The Portuguese alloy frame manufacturer aims at producing half a million frames per annum from this new unit. However, there still remain many hurdles, both legal as well as technical to be crossed, before the milestone can be reached. <br /><br />The aluminium e-bike frame making project is going to be first of its kind for the very simple reason that robots will be brought in for welding the aluminium bike frames. Before this, car industry has used robots in welding car chassis&rsquo; made from aluminium many a times but in bicycle domain this will be the first time. With the project, Triangle&rsquo;s too will be stepping into an unchartered territory that is strewn with technical challenges. <br /><br /><img style="vertical-align: middle; display: block; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;" src="http://www.alcircle.com/uploads/images/header_robotwelded-trek-frames.jpg" alt="News" width="632" height="442" /><br /><br />Triangle&lsquo;s plans to produce 150,000 aluminium alloy bicycle and e-bike frames in 2017. According to President Armando Levi this production planning gives the company possibilities to prepare samples that will be ready by January 2018. That would act as a trigger the next phase, which is going into full production mode by May 2018.<br /><br />One of the three companies that have joined hands with Triangle&rsquo;s for this aluminium bicycle and e-bike frames making project is Miranda, a parts manufacturer headquartered in Portugal. <br /><br />On being asked about the prospect of the upcoming project, President Jo&atilde;o of Miranda said, &ldquo;With Triangle&rsquo;s ultimately producing some half a million frames, you need a lot of frame parts for that. In particular aluminium frames for e-bikes have a lot of forged parts. We plan to make some 2 million forged parts for Triangle&rsquo;s.&rdquo;</p>