New Top Of The Range Mountain Bikes To Be Built Using A Titanium Sheet

Historically, mountain bikes have been heavy and usually built with steel, however leading manufacturers have now decided to put together mountain bikes that are lighter than traditional mountain bikes.The growing demand for making mountain bikes lighter – from callipers to bottle holders – has forced bike manufacturers into looking for materials that make mountain bikes lighter.
Despite the fact that many mountain bikes are made out of carbon fiber or metal tubes, some manufacturers are getting ahead of the game by starting to use hand-folded sheet metal to put their frames together.
These makers state that by using aluminum and titanium sheet to construct frames makes the frames lighter, stronger and cheaper to make than other alternatives.
Furthermore, a Gizmag.com report has suggested that a bike maker company who is getting ahead of the game is the US company Ronin Metal Masters, who have come up with innovative ways of cutting perforations into laser - or punch-cut pieces of sheet metal, allowing the sheets to be handmade.
The sheets are folded, then riveted or glued together, to form bike chassis. A prototype was built using .024 inch thick to 6061-T6 aluminum. The finished frame is very light and weighs less than 1.4kg.Engineers Rob, Mark and Andy, who form the Ronin team, declared: "We’ve taken an old art form and invented a new way to produce with sheet metal.
"We’ve broadened the material base to include stronger materials like titanium that were extremely impractical to form traditionally. We can form shapes without prohibitively expensive machinery and with a high degree of accuracy."
Ronin is looking for more investment in order to safeguard its concept and put together a mountain bike with a two-pound titanium frame.Currently, the new mountain bikes are only sold to customers that are near to Ronin Metal Masters’ base in San Francisco, but if the bikes continue to sell quickly it won’t take too long for the new titanium and aluminum bikes to be available in the UK.