Bike frames are most commonly made out of steel. If you’ve got money for something nicer though, you might go with something in aluminium or carbon fiber. [The Q] went completely off-the-wall with this build, though, constructing a bicycle frame out of 147 nuts.
Yes, a variety of nuts in various sizes were laid out and welded together to make the frame. The overall layout is a conventional diamond frame, albeit constructed out of many nuts stuck together rather than with tubes. Notably though, several important areas aren’t made in this way. The front and rear dropouts are made of sheet steel, and the bottom bracket, seat post mount, and headstem are all made of steel tube. After welding, the bike was given an attractive coat of grey paint. It was then laced up with the usual running gear and given a set of chunky mountain bike tires.
We wouldn’t want to push this frame too hard over bumps and jumps. The video only shows the nuts being joined with tack welds, and the front forks look particularly fragile. One suspects a decent shock loading could snap parts of the frame apart. Overall, though, it’s an eye-catching bike that has plenty of easy places to attach a lock. For an ultra-fashionable city-bound cruiser, it would be hard to beat.
We’ve featured some weird and wonderful bikes over the years, including this tasteful plywood design. Video after the break.
No thanks! I like my teeth in my head.
Just wear a helmet that you make out of milk jugs and held in place with spaghetti that you “weld” together by making it wet then letting it dry to put it on.
When it cracks your going to rack your nuts!
What a nutty idea!
B^)
An absolutely ingenious and beautiful bike hack! :-D
This bike doesn’t have hot glue tires and rebar spokes.
Yet.
I see what you did there!
This is just advertising for Big Nuts, Big Rebar, and Big Glue. lmao
lol
Be careful welding things that aren’t plain steel! The fumes from various platings can be toxic.
It seems like HaD has become the YouTube Recap site.
More and more hackers modders makers, put their stuff on youtube instead of on their blogs etc. It is a fun way to document, one can get creative and there is even a chance to earn a few bugs.
Hackaday allways was a recap site for all kinds of online sources. The content that we expect here is shifting towards youtube, that is all.
Care for the content, not for the platform.
Not really HaD’s fault if most people share their projects through video nowadays, is it?
You can’t force the entire rest of the internet to document their ideas the way you would prefer and being ‘wrong’ doesn’t stop them being interesting… To actually convince ANYONE doing interesting things they can’t be bothered to document fully to go back to school and write their projects up in the teacher approved fully detailed way HAD’s audience would have to be bigger or vastly wealthier than the youtube, so that all the boring bits being documented actually have some reward! If you are the sort that likes real documentation alongside your own projects you will be doing it anyway, if not there has to be a reason to do so.
So I’d rather have interesting idea presented by HAD than not have them just because their preferred method of presenting their own idea annoys me – Its still an interesting idea, one I may wish to use as inspiration or directly one day, and even if its just as in this case a very pretty art project with some engineering its a bit of FUN!
> document their ideas the way you would prefer …
That’s just it, YT videos are almost never technical documentations.
In case of hacks that can/should be on HaD (YT) videos are at most a showcase, presentation and/or demonstration but almost never a documentation.
It’s kinda like comparing nature documentaries on TV with the actual documentations biologist do.
I’m with ono with this one – just because many supposed hackers and hacks are only on YT doesn’t mean HaD should/must turn into that “mass media TV”.
Just a few years ago most HaD articles had a combination of title, teaser image(?) and maybe 1-2 images in the article where you could easily grasp the idea/principle/concept/etc of the hack without reading the article.
Maybe it’s just me and/or I’m getting too old but I do “feel” that to be less and less the case for the last few years.
>That’s just it, YT videos are almost never technical documentations.
In case of hacks that can/should be on HaD (YT) videos are at most a showcase, presentation and/or demonstration but almost never a documentation.
For almost everything of that sort featured here the demonstration is more than enough though – its hugely informative with lots of details there to see, so what if its not spelling it all out – we are smart enough use what is there to create our own spin on it should it appeal.
And that idea I probably wouldn’t have ever seen if not for HAD publishing it, and by the sounds of it neither would you @limroh, @ono – we prefer more scientific methods of information delivery…
Haha. You were just bitching in another comment section about the site. Seems like you should stop coming here?
Could be the converse, articles based on 2 pages of code that popped up on github, “It speaks for itself” umm yeah… need more of a happy medium… or at least a mildly content “sensitive”.
Whatever man it’s a cool bike
I wonder if he stored them in a bag or a sack while assembling it?
I wonder if they’re from Deez?
lmao
That’s just nuts!
There’s something awfully screwy going on around here
In a roundabout way, it resembles a plot twist.
We can torque more about that thread later, it’s time to bolt, I need to put clothes in the washer.
Ugh, you got me! Time for me to play Taps, and die..
Maybe we can have a contest among Fiat and Jaguar owners to see who can make the best bicycle out of the parts that fall off their cars.
When I first read this, I though it said a bike made by 147 nuts. That’s teamwork!
One Pentagon contract, coming right up!
That’s nothin. From Biker Build Off, the Chain Link Motorcycle:
https://www.autoevolution.com/news/chain-frame-motorcycle-indian-larrys-last-build-needs-an-owner-to-license-it-140530.html
… I’d choose the plywood frame over this one, TBH. Especially if it’s marine grade and properly finished/sealed.
I mean, it’s nice as an art piece, but I wouldn’t dream of using it as a daily driver.
Steel is awesome. Most people way underestimate a given piece of steel’s strength.
In statics the my teacher demonstrated this with a group of engineering students. We ALL guessed low.
If the welds are good, this shouldn’t break. If.
On the other hand, if one weld is shitty it will be found the hard way.
Also Chinesium nuts, would inspect all before starting the welding. Bubbles happen in castings. Likely not grade8 nuts made from forgings. Rather hardware store nuts.
And that huge variability in quality is kinda a killer for this project, when you REALLY need 100% good welds and 100% good nuts at every single join, as the whole structure is a massive stress concentrater looking for the weakest nut. Its just asking for failures really. It gets even worse though, as not only do you need really good welds you also need the heat cycle the welding process inherently contains to not weaken the structure, be really easy to end up with very very varied material properties across each ‘pipe’ as the weld length grows and the heat soak builds – not saying you can’t solve that problem, as it is technically possible, just that the construction method is not conducive to a reliable structure…
Though the biggest downside, as you are quite correct steel is theoretically very capable is that the thing will weigh a ton, must be at least 2x maybe even 5x the quantity of steel compared to the steel tube frame bikes, and those ain’t light…
Yes, they should have used more nuts and staggered them, giving each nut 2 additional surfaces to weld!
One of the stupidest and most pointless things I’ve ever seen. I’m lovin ‘it!
On one hand, this is cool and looks great
One the other, they made a bike out of hundreds of stress concentrations
I detect even more stress concentrations in this comment section.
Tig welding of high tensile steel nuts might make this thing quite strong, the nuts themselves are likely to be quite resistant to the various stresses inherent to the frame
Hey, this guy is from Kharkiv, Ukraine