News and Events

Keep up to date with the latest news and events of Modular Bikes.

Thursday, September 17, 2020

Riding in Lockdown

 

Arrival at Wecycle with 2 bikes and a Bickerton. One I had picked up, the other fixed up.


, and Bickerton out of the bag for the trip home.

Keeping up with family, the first of a few video conferences I've done with Mum, Dad and my brother, son and nieces and nephews.

Nooooooh!  Op shops still closed.

Slightly busted and possibly abandoned bike outside savers.

Matt Ben with his Penny farthing and my bike on the Kew Boulevarde.






Anthony at The Hive shopping centre. I'm fixing his bike for him

 and gave him a loaner
 

 

Hi, a few photos of riding in lockdown. Some of my rides have been ferrying bike around the place for Wecycle and work in the spirit of Wecycle. Other days I just go up and do laps of the Kew Boulevarde which is coupled with a shpping trip. Downhill I'm quite quick on the Boulevarde, passing most people but on the flat and uphill I get passed a lot.

Current project is finishing the bike for a homeless gentleman Anthony. It was on its last legs with both brakes not working and a puncture. Mostly fixed now, I hope to true the wheels so the brakes don't rub tomorrow.

 

Anthony happy with his refurbed bike.

Update Sep 24 fixed and delivered now.

 

Best Wishes

 

Steve Nurse

 

 

Monday, September 7, 2020

Publication News

Andrew Dressel on the Panthertrike tilting trike.

 Hi

When I was studying at Uni for a Master's degree a few years ago it was part of my job to publish articles and visit conferences. This was a big catch up as I had worked all of  my professional life in private industries and visiting and especially presenting at external conferences wasn't part of the culture. So uni mkII an few years ago (mkI engineering degree was in the 1980's) sort of turned me on to scientific publishing. 

I've been researching for a new edition of my book and so clicking all over the internet for stuff and eventually found this article from the University of Milwaukee Wisconsin which was presented at this conference and saw some of  my work quoted at least in picture form. So I found a mistake in the article and wrote to Andrew Dressler about it and he wrote back and we had an amicable conversation. Here's a bit of our emails.


From Stephen Nurse

"Hi

I'm in the process of reading your article here. First of all, nice work, there's a lot of detail there and I hope the project is a success for you. 

I found a few mistakes related to my work. Its not really a big deal but if corrections could be put into the paper it would be appreciated and it would probably help the paper overall. Fig 2 shows leaning trikes which are both my NLT's, neither of them are Vi Vuongs and this should be fixed one way or the other. For examples of Vi's work see here , you might have to do frame grabs to get whole pictures of trikes.

None of my work is cited in the article but I think this article (talks about crank length and has a pic of Vi) would cover it.

If you're interested, the whole of my trike design is on thingiverse, here is the link
If you have any questions please ask!

Regards Stephen Nurse BE Mech M Des

"
Mr. Nurse,

It is great to hear from you and thank you for kind words and fine contributions to the field. Thank you for the link to the Thingiverse!

I apologize for the mistakes and will do the best I can to get them corrected.

I also apologize for somehow not citing your work. It was purely a knuckle-headed mistake on my part and in no way is meant to be disrespectful.

I am relieved to see that I managed at least to cite your work in our recent ASME paper, which I have attached. Sadly, it does repeat the Fig 2 error.

Meanwhile, Mr. Pierson and Ms. Shortreed have graduated and moved onto exciting and lucrative careers. Happily, Mr. Van Asten is still with us and hoping to make some progress in the coming year, despite how badly and embarrassingly we have bungled our handling of the pandemic. Wish us luck.

Andrew Dressel, PhD
Departments of Mechanical and Civil Engineering
University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee"

So all very polite talking to Andrew and good to see some of my work having an impact. The Panther Trike website is here. Good luck with your research !

Proposed Kretschmer bike and the min and max developments his proposed gearbox brings. (Snip from my article for this velomobile seminar based on the Kretschmer article here . )
 And I've written for a Velomobile seminar, and also to Jeremy Garnet from Velotegra.  But only 3 articles were received for the seminar sofar, so its in limbo a bit. 
Michaux Bicycle, Bantam Geared Hub Bicycle from the 1800s and their effective wheel sizes in blue. 

 Anyway, I'm quite pleased with how the diagrams came out.  I'm quite a visual / experiential / doing person and these circles made a bit of sense to me, more than a spreadsheet table would.  Look forward to revising and eventually publishing the new article.

Regards  Steve Nurse
 








Wednesday, September 2, 2020

Down a worm hole

Anne Oskam bike with original Roulandt in the background, Photo credit Wilco Pompert via this link

Another Anne Oskam bike! The google translation on the site by Johan Vrielink is "
In addition, the legendary developer Anne Oskam as a young man, on the design he made for Batavus , when he was head of the development department there. Again, a different drive than the standard circular movement."


This Link leads to a russian site detailing a Nuvinci style in hub gearbox made by Boris Frolov. It all looks too good to be true, and probably is
one variator costs at 350 Euro, has a pedal range multiplier ranging from 1 to 4, weighs from 2kg and efficiency is not less than 90%!

Hi, I have been on the internet researching bikes and came across a few oddities and some interesting stuff so have put it down here.

Not so much a worm hole this one and more like where my cycling should be, I found Tony's Tasmanian Cycling blog the other day. He has an electric assisted Greenspeed and pootles around and has fun. Some nice, gentle blog posts here.

Regards

Steve Nurse