2nd Year Capstone Project: The Descent Drive.

 

As part of the Mechanical Engineering program at BCIT, Second year students take part in a team-based design project. I worked alongside two team mates: Matthew Reid and Ryan Fernando, and our faculty advisor, Stephen McMillan, to create the Descent Drive Internal Gearbox for downhill mountain bikes. Both Matthew and I are avid downhill mountain bikers, and have been interested in bicycle gearbox technology as it has grown over the past decade. With our passion for mountain biking as inspiration, we set out to design a new bicycle gearbox that was built specifically to meet downhill mountain bikers demands. Knowing that the mountain bike industry is very market driven, we felt it was important to find a contact in industry that could provide both technical guidance and insight on the market demands of the mountain biking industry. We were fortunate enough to obtain support from Rocky Mountain Bicycles, we met with their Research and Technology Program Manager, Joanne Hastie, and Rocky Mountain provided us with a model of their 2012 Flatline downhill bike frame for us to make modifications to.

 

The team carried out market and patent research, followed by concept generation and selection, and came up with a gearbox layout that we felt would fulfill downhill mountain bikers requirements, as well as improve upon previous designs in terms of component compatability. Multiple iterations of models were made, each with slighly different mechanisms and geometry, and through these we were able to create a compact, lightweight and robust bicycle gearbox.

 

The team developed a simplified proof of concept prototype, which has been displayed at multiple expos and competitions, that helped illustrate the scale of the gearbox, and facilitated explanation of the internal mechanisms. Pictures and CAD animations of the project can be found below.