2012 FELT F SERIES WHITE PAPER 1. INTRODUCTION 2. DESIGN PRINCIPLES 3. DEVELOPMENT 4. MATERIALS ENGINEERING 5. FEATURES AND SPECS

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1 2012 FELT F SERIES WHITE PAPER 1. INTRODUCTION 2. DESIGN PRINCIPLES 3. DEVELOPMENT 4. MATERIALS ENGINEERING 5. FEATURES AND SPECS

2 INTRODUCTION Few, if any, competitive road bikes being raced today have a longer list of professional achievements than the Felt F1. There are several reasons why this is true: The most obvious is that Felt partners with some of the world s most talented road racers from international superstars to developing talents like those training at the UCI World Cycling Centre in Switzerland, where Felt is the official bike sponsor. Another reason the previous F1 has accomplished so much is that it s been around a while. Although each year this design was refined as materials became more advanced, the previous F1 being ridden to victories in major ProTour races comes from the same mold as the F bikes of six years ago. Among Felt s competitors, that s fairly unheard of. While most major manufacturers are driven by sales and marketing, Felt is and always has been a company where engineering comes first. If Felt-sponsored pros are winning with the F, and customers are raving about it, the next generation of the bike has to be something special. We are pushed to do one thing, says Felt s Director of Engineering Jeff Soucek. That s to develop the best bike we possibly can. Then we worry about the rest later. That philosophy starts at the top with the company s namesake, Jim Felt. And it has been adhered to by the engineers tasked with the difficult challenge of making the 2011 F1. The short story on the 2011 F1, the ProTour accomplished top-of-the line F Series frame is this: It s more than 100 grams lighter and 35 percent stiffer than the current F1. The new frameset has a host of features that lend it an improved ride quality, and it can easily be built up to weigh less than 13 pounds. That s the short story. This White Paper documents the rest of the story, how the 2011 F1 came to be.

3 So even though the new F1 possesses an outlook that is similar to its predecessor, it also has six years of engineering thought and development behind it. Fact is, it s radically different. Radically evolved. With the new frame design, and some major advancements we ve made in manufacturing, we were able to easily hit the stiffness and weight requirements which are really ambitious using standard modulus material, Soucek said. We could have looked at those testing numbers and said: Great, these numbers are better than any other bike on the market. Good enough, that s all we need from a marketing standpoint. DESIGN PRINCIPLES Of course there are plenty of complex engineering and material modifications that help the new model achieve its primary goals of being lighter and stiffer, but one look reveals a cohesive design narrative connecting the current and next-generation F. Both are born from a philosophy Felt engineers label Form follows Function. This follows Jim Felt s original concept of the company, Soucek says. Everything we do has a purpose, and everything is done to give the bike an increased level of quality or performance. We re always pushing the engineering envelope to get the best results. Of course, the F1 project didn t end there. Statistical data such as weight and stiffness are important, but Soucek says there s a lot more to the story. Early versions of the bike had all the numbers, but it was missing that really lively signature Felt feel we wanted. We spent months going through lay up schedules, making changes to fiber orientation and adding just the right balance of High and Ultra High Modulus material to give it that magic feel bikes get when everything s just right. Soucek admits it s a challenge to communicate the value of a superior ride quality, but that never stops Felt from setting out to achieve it. You can t really advertise it, he says. You can t market the fact that our bikes feel better. It s easy to advertise numbers. I know that s what a lot of companies do, but it s not what Felt does. Over time, through prototype testing, computer and laboratory simulation and team feedback, the final recipe of materials and assembly for the F1 was documented for production. In creating the next-generation F1, Felt engineers were granted the liberty to stay focused on that philosophy without being sidetracked by outside pressures. We don t introduce new products just to be different every year, Soucek says. We ve stayed away from that approach so when you look at Felt designs, most of them are clean. We try to keep things timeless.

4 DEVELOPMENT The F Series project began in It started with comprehensive scrutiny of the current F frameset s strengths and limitations. Competitive analysis, athlete feedback and, computerized Finite Element Analysis (FEA) provided Felt engineers with a clear picture of their starting point. We looked at where we might have overbuilt the last frame design, and why, Soucek says. If we knew then what we knew today, what would we have done differently? Soucek says. That s also when the real engineering challenge began. A lot of companies will just do a sketch or let the factories design the bike for them, Soucek says. But we do everything in-house. We make so many tweaks and changes Weprobably spent six months modifying the newbottom bracket area to get the shape of thatsection where the down tube comes into thebottom bracket and chainstay area justright. Analyzing test data from two facilities Felt s engineering/product development headquarters in Irvine, California, and its manufacturing facility in Asia was critical to gaining a realistic understanding of where the most significant improvements in terms of weight reduction and stiffness gains could be made with the new F1. Once the analysis phase was completed, the goals for the new bike were established. That s when you say, OK, we should be able to hit this number and this weight, Compared to its predecessor, the top tube and down tube of the new F1 have more square-shaped ends and rounded mid-sections. This improves stiffness and pedaling efficiency. The entire bottom bracket area is significantly larger and is now BB30- compatible. Every form has to be perfectly optimized and defined, Soucek says. Once that s done, you cut the molds.

5 Perfecting the shapes, design and the use of carbon fiber materials was one key to the breakthroughs made by the F1. The other was developing new manufacturing techniques. The new F1 benefits from two breakthrough construction processes; one is called Dynamic Monocoque Construction, the other InsideOut Technology. Dynamic Monocoque Construction is a process used to create, assemble and join different sections of the frame. The sections are molded separately and then joined by a special co-molding process. For each section, carbon fiber plies (for details, see Materials section) are strategically laid onto specially shaped internal molds. The lay-up is completed by hand, and the material is placed into a symmetrically split CNC-machined mold (think waffle iron). The mold halves are then closed and locked. A precise amount of pressure and heat is applied, and the bladder pushes the carbon fiber firmly against the mold. Felt takes the process a few steps further with its InsideOut Internally Optimized Molding Process. Custom-designed polyurethane inserts are placed inside the tubes during the molding process. They fit snugly against the shapes of the tubes, which helps eliminate any excess material inside the carbon fiber tubing. The benefit, besides having nice clean material surfaces inside the tubes, is obvious: Less material means less weight. When the heating process is complete, the mold is opened up and the cured monocoque section is removed. The sections are then joined together using a special co-molding process. They are bonded and then wrapped. The result, effectively, is a perfect frame every time inside and out. Because each frame size must have its own molds, Dynamic Monocoque Construction is considerably more complicated and expensive than other methods. But when it helps Felt engineers produce a sub 800-gram frameset that s 35 percent stiffer, the cost is more than worthwhile. InsideOut technology with polyurethane inserts helps eliminate excess material build-up inside the frame and reduces overall weight. Without InsideOut technology there is excess material build-up inside the frame.

6 MATERIALS ENGINEERING The data obtained from FEA testing confirmed that the tube shapes of the current F were already close to optimal for the bike s main purpose pure racing performance. Adhering to the form follows function philosophy, Felt engineers shirked the idea of redesigning any part of the new F1 just for looks. Our purpose was to make a bike that performed better, Soucek says. We don t compromise because of cost or because it s more difficult to build it a certain way. While the frame may appear at first glance to be similar to the current F1, the materials, and how they are used, differ greatly. There s a lot of new technology that s come into play with our internal molding and other manufacturing techniques that have allowed us to achieve some shapes and forms we couldn t before, Soucek says. We were able to build the intersections of the tubes a little bit differently and we ve been able to increase stiffness and decrease weight dramatically. Engineering and manufacturing high-performance carbon fiber frames is a more complicated process than working with steel, aluminum or titanium frames. There s much more to it than simply selecting a high-grade material, creating a mold, and cooking up framesets. The extremely light weight of the F1 makes the engineering that much more critical. The way to make a high performance road bike like this lighter is to use less carbon, Soucek says. As you use less carbon, the structure gets thinner and thinner. When you had a 1200-gram frame, it was easy to have a tube that had some concave shapes to it because you could add some material to it and prevent any buckling. But when you start talking sub 800-gram frames, you can t throw any more material at it.

7 With most carbon bicycle frames, standard epoxy resin is used as a binder to hold the individual fibers together in their desired locations and orientations. But Felt s Nano Tech is anything but standard. It actually enhances the performance of the frame at the molecular level of the resin with a stronger bond between the individual fibers. This system results in improved impact strength, and it also enhances the performance characteristics of the bike. How? By giving Felt engineers more options. With improved strength and impact resistance, they can use more of Felt s UHC Ultimate+Nano material to add stiffness without the frame becoming too fragile. The thinner walls, improved stiffness and snappy ride quality are all results of the Nano Tech resin. Raw carbon fiber comes with different levels of modulus (60T, 40T, 30T, for example), but as the name Ultra Hybrid Carbon implies, the F1 frame doesn t consist of just one type of material. It s a proprietary blend that s custom made to optimize the unique advantages of the different grades of carbon fiber. For example, stiffer fiber plies may be used in areas of peak stress such as the bottom bracket shell and down tube while higher-strength fiber plies are used in areas particularly susceptible to impact. Selecting the optimal materials is just part of the process. It s equally important to determine where each section of carbon fiber is placed, and in what order. These individual pieces of uni-directional carbon fiber are called plies. Each comes preimpregnated with NanoTech resin and is meticulously cut into the specific shapes needed to construct each frame. It s all done by hand, and the process applying the plies by hand, piece-by-piece is referred to as the lay-up schedule. The lay-up schedule is the blueprint for assembly. Developing a sub-800-gram frameset that s significantly stiffer than the current F1 was an accomplishment, but Soucek says hitting that goal was the easy part. The market is filled with carbon fiber bikes that are lightweight and stiff. It s the feel of a Felt that really sets it apart, and obtaining that feel requires a lot of trial and error. Perfecting the design and lay-up schedule takes years of experience and an understanding of how the bike should ride.

8 TECHNICAL SPECS UHC Ultimate+Nano The heart of the F1 frameset is the material from which it s made. Felt blends its highest modulus raw carbon fiber with a proprietary resin matrix to produce a much stronger bond between the individual fibers. This Nano technology increases strength at the molecular level of the material. Seven years in the making, it s the most advanced carbon fiber material being used in bicycles today. InsideOut This Internally Optimized molding process completely eliminates excess material, and therefore weight, on the inside of the frame tubes and junctions. Placing polyurethane bladders inside the frames during the molding process especially at the bottom bracket and head tube areas and then applying a precise amount of pressure and heat, results in perfectly formed tubes, inside and out. CONTROLTaper The F1 s tapered head tube increases front-end stiffness and steering precision without adding weight to the frameset. Using 1-1/8 top bearings and 1-1/2 bottom bearings, ControlTaper significantly improves the bike s handling characteristics and adds an unmatched level of control for cornering, descending and sprinting. BB30 Bottom Bracket The oversized junction of the F1 s down tube, seat tube and chainstays provides increased stiffness where it s needed most. The BB30 bottom bracket shell allows bearings to fit directly into the shell, without cups, to eliminate extra weight. It s lighter, stiffer and capable of accepting just about every high-performance bottom bracket on the market. Optimized for Cyclocross The F1 has been designed to optimize the latest parts and components for a competitive advantage. It has added tire clearance for wider rims and the cable routing is specifically designed to work with internal Shimano Di2 or mechanical systems.

9 2012 F SERIES TECHNICAL SPECS GEOMETRY Frame material: UHC Ultimate+Nano carbon fiber Size HA Frame details: Dynamic Monocoque Construction; Di2 optimized internal cable routing; BB30 bottom bracket SA TT horiz TT C-C Head Tube Fork: ControlTaper ST C-T ST C-C Fork material: UHC Ultimate+Nano carbon fiber BB Drop CS Front Center Fork details: Dynamic Monocoque construction; carbon fiber blades, dropouts, crown and external steerer Wheelbase Fork Offset Trail Sizes: 48, 51, 54, 56, 58, 61cm Stack Reach Set-back