Transformative design for composites

Carbon-fiber bikes and components are mainstream

It's taken a while. The aerospace industry pioneered composite design and manufacture as long ago as the 1970s. Soon, sports-car builders started to experiment with it. In 1981 McLaren became the first F1 team to race an all-composite race car chassis.

The first composite monocoque cycle frame appeared 5 years later; only now have carbon fiber composites displaced steel and aluminum for most race bikes.

In 2007, 3T decided carbon fiber was the only way. But ‘me-too’ designs had no place in 3T’s future. We recruited one of Italy’s leading composites design engineers, Richard McAinsh – he’s the guy who ‘designed the red bits’ of Ferrari’s race cars – to lead a renewed engineering team.

Under his direction, 3T’s design engineering was transformed. Now, every component is a clean-sheet design making optimal use of carbon fiber’s unique strengths. They are engineered from the inside out, rather than styled from the outside in.

Airframe and race-car designers use advanced software tools to analyze loads and optimize structural design. 3T recruited a creative and dedicated team of engineers and put them in charge of the bike world's most advanced computer-aided engineering (CAE) platform, the 3T Intelligent Production Lifecycle. Now, we build bike components to aerospace standards.

The first product in 3T's carbon fiber renaissance was the iconic Ventus, the thinnest, fastest, and most radical handlebar ever. We went on to build, in a few seasons, a complete portfolio of light, elegant, strong cockpit components, for MTB, track, and cyclocross, as well as the classic road and triathlon disciplines.

Such rapid new-product development can be achieved only in carbon fiber, by a development team at the top of its game, with the best tools available.

Our engineers' carbon-fiber mastery is again to the fore in the new-for-2012 wheels. Ingeniously sculpted carbon-fiber rims enable a transformative approach to wheel building, with benefits of speed, strength, and ease of use for the rider.

These new wheels, Mercurio and Accelero, take their place alongside Ventus among the milestones of composite design.

Download the white paper Unlocking the strengths of carbon-fiber

Download the backgrounder The 3T Intelligent Production Lifecycle