Fluid Works
Building made-to-measure bike frames with robots and lasers.
Fluid Works is a project about building custom bicycle frames using parametric models, an industrial robot, and a laser. I work with a bike fitter on the sizing side; everything else — software, robot control, fabrication — I’m handling myself.
Standard frame production optimizes for a small set of sizes. A custom frame fits the rider, but custom fabrication is slow and expensive. Fluid Works tries to close that gap: a parametric model generates the geometry from the rider’s measurements, and an industrial robot cuts the tubes with a laser based on those specifications. Frames are then welded using a laser welding process.
The serial badge references the current archetype and design algorithm. The rider data is encoded in the serial number. Visual labels allow tracing back the exact manufacturing data.
The software is at prototype stage. Current work is focused on the physical production — robot programming and the laser cutting workflow.