Singletrack Magazine issue 114: (Hand) Made In China

I’d mooted this idea to a few companies over the years and usually received replies along the line of ‘Great idea! It’s never going to happen…’ Finally, though, Simon Wild and the team at Saracen Bikes agreed to let me come along on a factory visit to see how things get made. Simon went further than that in fact. He’s proud of his suppliers and of the work that Saracen’s factories do, so I had carte blanche to shoot any photos I wanted, ask any questions, and to really try to get an idea about how a complex modern mountain bike is brought to the shop floor for you or me to buy. 

Snookered.

You know those trick shots in snooker where the player hits one ball and the chain reaction causes every other ball to land in the pockets, all at the same time? 

That seems a good analogy to start with for bike design. You’re trying to set things in motion, over a period of months, sometimes years: the product design, the component spec, the ISO testing, the production, the component assembly and painting, the shock tuning, the samples, the brochure photography, the graphics, the finished bikes arriving by container – everything, so that it all culminates in that one model being available for sale on a particular date. Preferably a bike that the customers will have heard about through advertising, and seen used through team sponsorship, with a dealer and warranty backup, in this year’s hot colours, with the best new suspension design and fitted with the latest must-have components. All of that needs to happen for every model in the range, every year. And when that’s done, there needs to be something in the pipeline for next year. It’s quite a treadmill. 

My trip would take in visits to both Taiwan and mainland China, to see several factories where Saracen’s alloy suspension bikes, carbon hardtails, and carbon full suspension bikes are made, painted and assembled. Then I’d have a chance to test out one of the new models before its launch date in autumn 2017. But first, let’s go back to April… 

Into China.

A bleary, jet-lagged state is rarely conducive to smooth Customs formalities – especially in China, where you need a visa for entry and a sponsoring company to vouch for you. Luckily my papers were in order and, after a silent look up and down, the young customs officer let me through and into mainland China. 

China these days is falling over itself to modernise and westernise, sometimes at the expense of quality over quantity. Our first stop was Huizhou, a city you won’t have heard of, but one which has rocketed from a couple of million residents to over five million in half a dozen years, such is the concentration of industry and the self-perpetuating nature of a growing city that needs builders, who need homes, that need builders…

While the city didn’t feel too foreign, there was a certain Wild West air to everything, as the explosion of people and building and industry still hadn’t erased all the old China underneath. Every now and then a glimmer of that old China would show through from underneath the smart concrete covering.

My companions for the trip would be Simon Wild, the brand’s coordinator and both its biggest critic and biggest fan, and Ryan Carroll, responsible for most of the suspension and 3D design for the brand. Both strong characters, they work well together in a married-couple kind of way. Bickering endlessly some days and wordlessly communicating great ideas the next. Ryan lives in Taiwan, which gives him great access to the factories for both feedback and quality checking. 

A lot is made of ‘QC’ for manufacturing in China. It seems that there are literally Chinese whispers, and instructions passed down the line can result in well-meant mistakes as designs are lost in translation. This trip was just one of several that Simon and Ryan make during the year to make sure that things are on track. 

First timers.

Stepping into Hua Chin, my first Chinese bike factory, I was aware of the public perception of what I might see: the terrible working conditions, the miserable young workers sticking things together with barely enough competence to get the job done for the lowest price possible. 

Obviously, this wasn’t the case. And how! The long factory building, lit by sweeping windows, was clean and orderly and a lot less grimy than many similar factories I’ve seen in the UK. Linda, one of the owners showed Simon, Ryan and me round in the rough order that bike building would go. We started with crates of shiny alloy tubes, all cut and mitred ready for making into Saracen’s new alloy Kili Flyer. 

Factories have many different brands that they work for and Hua Chin works for some US bike brands as well as Saracen. Also taking up a huge part of production when we were there was an order for China’s version of the MoBike – a dockless bike sharing system for China, with simple bikes and a solar-powered, app-based booking scheme. So in between high-end suspension bikes, the factory was also making tens of thousands of sturdy alloy town bikes. This was evident when the principal of the team of welders was interrupted from making rear triangles to show us how the new main pivot and the head tube would be welded in production. The fact that he could turn from making chainstays on one bike to laying down a perfect bead on a head tube on the next was impressive. 

The speed and finesse of the welders was remarkable. They work in a small team, with the tasks split between them. The first welder might do the left hand of the head tube and BB shell, the next will do the right side and half the seat tube junction and so on. This is designed to keep the heat from distorting the frame and to allow each welder to comfortably work on similar jobs to keep quality consistent and speed high. 

After a visual inspection of every frame, the welded frames then move to alignment, where things like symmetry, braze-on positions and component fit are checked. A lot of the early pre-production runs we saw are to make sure that tools can be made to speed the production process up. A hydraulically activated jig that keeps all the tubes precisely in place may take a week for the production manager to build, but if it saves 20 minutes of preparation for every single frame of hundreds, it works out in the end. Leonard, the QC manager, showed Simon how the rear swingarm would be aligned in three planes – not just to make sure that the shock was compressed correctly, but that the brake bosses were on plane and the rear wheel kept aligned through the stroke. 

Just as we got to the mezzanine floor to shoot the factory from a height, the workers disappeared. It seems that far from being worked hard day and night, the staff breaks are generous and pretty plentiful. There’s a mid-morning, and a mid-afternoon break and an entire hour and a half at lunchtime. We only just managed to gather the welders for a brief photo as the shift finished and before they took off for their lunch break. 

Our lunch, meanwhile, was some noodles in the meeting room while Simon and Ryan discussed fine details for the coming frame production. Not everything can be designed on the computer and sometimes real-world samples are needed (whether welded up or 3D printed) in order to see how well cables and components play together. Another thing that is hard to predict is how well a finish will take and whether it’ll match the colour-matching components. 

Building Boris.

Our afternoon visit was to Long Trend Composites, the company that makes Saracen’s carbon hardtails. But not before we’d seen hundreds of China’s Boris-bikes lined up ready for collection. The most impressive part was how the finished bikes left the factory – through a hole in the top floor wall and on a hooked conveyor belt down the outside of the building. How else are you going to get hundreds of bikes to leave the top floor?

Long Trend resembled a university science block, with long, polished corridors, flanked by glass windows into interesting-looking rooms. In these, workers were sanding paint finishes, or unrolling carbon prepreg from $1,000 rolls of the stuff ready to be CNC cut into precise forms. Other windows looked into layup rooms where the many layers that go into bottom bracket shells and top tubes were laid up before being prepped with internal inflatable bladders that put pressure on the carbon and squeeze out the excess plastic. 

In another room were the ovens where the frames were cured. The set-up was very impressive, but, as I would see the next day, things could be a lot, lot bigger. We got to see Saracen’s new Zenith carbon hardtail frame, among others, a prototype painted and finished, being prepped for final clear coat. We’d see this frame again at the end of our week, when we got to the final assembly plant in Taiwan.

Composite Gear.

Composite Gear is one of China’s premier carbon factories and Simon recalls the first time that he went to see the factory. Or rather the foyer. CG can afford to pick and choose its clients and Simon found that Saracen had to prove that it wasn’t going to waste its time before they were let through the door. Once the brand had shown that its designs and quantities were ambitious enough, it then had access to the not inconsiderable talents that Composite Gear could provide. CG makes Saracen’s full suspension bikes, like the carbon downhill Myst, the Kili Flyer and the new carbon Ariel. 

It’s worth remembering that Taiwan and China have been making carbon bike frames for a generation and that companies in those countries have more experience than any other country. Even the most traditional of Italian road brands looks to China for its carbon construction. It’s not been a case of getting a lower price for years; it’s about getting the most skilled designers and workers possible to do the job. 

While the American or British bike designers can present a 3D model of the tube shapes and suspension action, it’s still going to be down to the factory to work out the carbon construction: the complicated layup of layers of carbon material and the manner in which those pressured layers of carbon transfer the huge forces that travel through a modern suspension job. 

We looked at samples of 2018 bikes – the rear triangle of the Myst now has a three-position dropout and this had been constructed in a 3D model, attached to a regular carbon swingarm. This is often machined or printed from solid plastic to allow regular components to be fitted into place to check fit. There were also colour samples to check on frame tubes. While Pantone colours and paint chips can go a long way to standardising colours, nothing beats seeing a painted frame in real life rather than rendered on a computer screen. 

Composite Gear’s factory was a much bigger outfit than I’d seen so far. It was both more high-tech and low-tech than I’d imagined. CNC plotters precisely cut carbon sheets, which were then laid up precisely according to a very strict menu of what went where, yet in another room, freshly made, high-end time trial frames sat in a big bucket as they came out of the moulds, before going to be finished and beautifully painted and decaled and sold for thousands. On one machine, pre-bonding surfaces were precisely machined and cleaned before glueing. On the next machine, a guy seemed to just eyeball the drilling of a shock-mount hole. And while that might be entirely in tolerance, these things are often why designers like to see the whole process for themselves before just assuming that the factory is doing what it was meant to. 

Generation Game.

An example layup demonstration for a Kili Flyer was set up for us in the clean layup room. A worker moved with effortless grace as she built up layers of carbon prepreg sheet around a plastic-coated wooden form. Layer after layer went on according to the predetermined menu as she added large sheets and smaller reinforcing ones, all cut and oriented to maximise the stiffness of the carbon fibres. When it was done, she whipped out the wooden form to leave a hollow, but still floppy carbon tube ready to be joined onto other frame parts before it went into the oven. We then saw the pieces go into another, female wooden form for the head tube to be wrapped on. Then the front end was fitted with bladders and ready for cooking in a heated steel mould. 

While a company like Hope can painstakingly cut and beautifully lay material directly into the final mould, they’re only making a frame or so a day. At CG the moulds can’t be left idle for a moment and they’re not even cool before the next frame is fitted in and sent to be baked for 90 minutes. 

Simon was invited to try his hand at laying up a top tube. Even though to our eyes he did a good job of peeling off the backing and smoothing down his tacky carbon sheet on top of the others, our carbon mistress wasn’t happy and pulled it off again, smoothing it back down again with an expert touch that I can only equate to how a master sushi chef crafts a maki roll. 

Baking hot.

Down at the ovens, we got to see ‘our’ frame put into its still-hot mould, hooked up to the air lines for the bladders and, with the top lifted into place by two burly guys, sent off to sit sandwiched between two massive heated plates for an hour and a half. 

Once the frame comes out of the mould, it then needs the flash trimming off, and the cable ports and pivots drilling and machining. Kili Flyers are made in two pieces, so a further process is needed to socket the two halves together before more carbon wrapping and another small bake to permanently join the two halves. Now I’ve seen this join, I still can’t find it on a painted frame – such is the smoothness of the finished join and paint job.

We got to see some finished frames, ready on racks. They just happened to be 2017 race season Mysts for the Madison/Saracen downhill team. The next time we’d see them would be at a World Cup race, travelling at speed. 

Taiwan travels.

Our journey wasn’t complete; we needed to follow the Kili and Ariel frames to Taiwan, where they get painted and assembled into complete bikes and shipped to the UK.

Arriving in Taiwan by plane, we took a bullet train to Taichung, a city with huge bike connections. A short drive out of the bright, bustling city and we were into the Taiwanese countryside. With a lot of countryside set aside for rice paddies, growing right up to the steep-sided, wooded mountains, it was a lot more rural than I was expecting. Every now and again there’d be a small village and a few low factories. My guides filled me in – there was the place to get great steel hardtails made, over there was the factory that makes handlebars for this company and that company. It seemed refreshingly more like the collection of small workshops you might see in northern Italy than the urban Asian Bladerunner bustle I was expecting. 

Willing is a factory that assembles bikes for a large number of companies, and we were there to meet with Dean and his staff to check final paint and decals for next year’s Saracen ranges. In the office were a bunch of mostly finished frames, some of which we’d seen during the week, like the Gulf Racing orange and blue hardtail we’d seen at Long Trend and the fully built new model carbon Ariel… Simon was busy checking paint tubes against laptop drawings while Ryan checked that shock bolts fitted frames that were only designed when that new Fox shock was just some measurements and a photo of how it would look. Even at this late stage, it’s still possible to find components that clash or aren’t the size they were meant (or that you’d understood) to be. 

Eyeing up.

A tour of the Willing factory showed the assembly lines where finished frames would be built into bikes and then packed into boxes. Ever built a bike from a box and wondered how on earth they pack it into such a small space? Companies like Willing have a precise method that dictates where each component goes, where the zip ties and the foam protection goes – even a single exact bit of tape on a rim if it’s likely that something will scratch it. Everything must be repeatable – and workers have iPads on which they can access the spec for every bike, finished colour, and photos of how they all fit together. Once the assembly line starts, it’s all about speed and efficiency, but like all the factories I’d seen, much effort and time goes into getting that actual process correct so that it works every single time.

Our final stop was to see the sample frames being masked off for the two-tone paint. I was astounded to see three of Willing’s workers precisely taping off areas for the two-tone paint job with craft knives and tweezers to put the masking film exactly where it was needed. All by eye, referring to a colour printout of the frame. And this wasn’t the prototype production line. This was every single painted frame. Such hands-on work was surprising. Even after the frames came back from painting, the decals – stacked ready for each frame and colour – were applied by hand, by eye, with stickered stripes perfectly matching painted accents, indistinguishable from each other. A final ‘Saracen’ logo, again by eye, and the frame was ready for final clear coat and inspection. 

What now?

That was the first sample run of a model-year process that takes around 18 months in total, from initial design to shop floor. Assuming that models from that sample run pass safety testing and Saracen’s approval, they will be air-shipped to the UK for final approval, test riding and both studio and trail photography for the 2018 brochure. They’ll then need to be presented to the dealers and press, ready for orders to be taken and reviews written. Meanwhile, there are the 2019 models waiting in the wings with their own set of challenges and component specs for products that haven’t been invented yet. 

Thanks to Saracen Bikes, who paid for the transport and accommodation on this trip.