Checking the Boxes
Carry is a contract job I undertook to design and fabricate a full-suspension, electric cargo bike. Ambitious, right? I found the design process for this project more difficult than anything I’ve worked on before - there was a seemingly endless amount of constraints and criteria to define. Ultimately, the bike has a longtail cargo layout with geometry somewhere inbetween the Yuba Kombi and Radwagon. The suspension system is a linkage-driven pivot with two different pivot locations to isolate the sprung frame from drive forces for a low and high center-of-gravity scenario. By swapping a few shoulder bolts, the linkage supports both pivot configurations with minimal effect on the shock leverage curve. Given this frame is a handling prototype, this allows the rider to try both pivot configs back-to-back without changing the shock tune.
The most significant challenge of the project was defining the fixtures and fabrication methods for a quarter-long design and build process. This timeline is pretty short for a full-time student so I focused heavily on simplifying the build process, reusing fixture components, and implementing commercial off the shelf products whenever possible.
