I was contacted in 2018 by Joe Presto, to design an extra controller for a Pelaton Bike. The purpose was to change speeds on the bike effortlesly and without having to break the riders flow of movement whilst exercising.
I was contacted in 2018 by Joe Presto to CAD design a controller and motor casing for a Pelaton Bike. Initially, the brief was to change speeds on the bike effortlesly. In addition, it could not break the riders flow of movement whilst exercising. At all times, the controller had to be within reach of a finger and thumb. So, the rider could adjust there grip position with the controller. We used a deflection grip fitting, to mount the controller body to handle.
Firstly, the design included a Motor, which was attached to the main frame of the pelaton bike. furthermore, i created the motor casing, by getting scan of the bike frame and modelling around it.
In addition a controller was connected to the handle bar. Again, i designed the casing and joe designed and assembled the electronics but it was challenging ot create a body shaped as it was, whilst also keeping the mold tool as a simple 2 part mold with no undercuts
The motor casing took about 3 weeks of pure cad modelling. Firstly, we modelled 7 or 8 protoype revisions. All of which, were 3d printed on joes prusa. Joe concieved the idea and built the programmable board. However, the design work for the motor controller mostly involved complex surfacing. So, I re-modelled over some of the scan geometry of the excerise bike. This new surface data gave me points to model the motor casing. Thus, I modelled around the components and bike stem, to create the geometry. Furthermore,the weld bead on the peleton bike joints varied slightly from bike to bike. As a result, I had to create variable tolerance between the connecting surfaces. I used solidworks design software to 3d model, render and output all CAM files for production.