How Carbon Fiber Rims Work, and What Makes FusionFiber Different

Travis Tomczak is the Global Marketing Director at Forge + Bond. The company manufactures bike wheels and accessories using a lightweight material known as FusionFiber.

• How does carbon fiber rim manufacturing generally work? 
• What are some of the challenges associated with carbon fiber manufacturing?
• Are there limitations in terms of how the material can be used, or how it performs?
• How is FusionFiber different from carbon fiber in terms of the materials used and the manufacturing process?
• How are sheets of FusionFiber manufactured?
• How is a sheet of FusionFiber shaped into a product at Forge+Bond, for example a rim?
• Are there any performance advantages of FusionFiber over traditional carbon fiber?
• Is it more expensive to manufacture rims from FusionFiber than carbon fiber? 
• Is FusionFiber infinitely recyclable, or does the material degrade each time it’s recycled? Can the scraps or recycled rims, for example, be used to create new rims?
• Where can consumers recycle their FusionFiber rims?
• With so many different polymer choices and layups available, could a particular blend of FusionFiber make sense for handlebars or even bike frames? 
• What is Forge+Bond’s connection to CSS Composites, the company that produces FusionFiber rims for brands like Evil and Revel?
• With such a new material and technology, what sort of product testing has Forge+Bond done? How do you handle product warranty claims?
• What’s next for Forge+Bond?

Get more info at forgeandbond.com.

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Automated transcript

Jeff Barber 0:00
Hey everybody, welcome to the Singletracks podcast. My name is Jeff, and today my guest is Travis Tomczak. Travis is the Global Marketing Director at Forge and Bond. The company manufactures bike wheels and accessories using a lightweight material known as Fusion Fiber. Thanks for joining us, Travis.

Travis Tomczak 0:35
Right on. Thanks for having me, Jeff.

Jeff Barber 0:35 So before we get into talking about Fusion Fiber, let’s talk a little bit about carbon fiber and how that’s used to make mountain bike rims in particular. How does the process generally work?

Travis Tomczak 0:35
Yeah. So I mean most, if not all, of the carbon composites that are in our space are typically a thermoset base, meaning that you have a carbon fiber textile mixed with an epoxy, a glue. And that is how, again, the wheels, the frames, handlebars, they’re all laid up that way and done with the epoxy as the bonding agent that is cured, hand laid, etc.

Jeff Barber 1:11
Okay, and so, yeah, when you’re making something like a rim, you have like a mold, I’m guessing, right? And you inlay this carbon fiber, which is sort of like a fabric, right? It’s like a textile type of thing. So, yeah, like, what’s the process like, in terms of shaping that material into something like a carbon rim?

Travis Tomczak 1:33
So with a standard carbon rim, you’re going to have to, so the base material is refrigerated, which takes quite a bit of energy. You have to refrigerate it. It has a shelf life. It comes out, it is in a big sheet, like, again, like a textile. You have to cut it roughly into that shape, and then it’s laid up in pieces, generally by hand. And that’s often why most of it is done in Asia, because you need that lower cost, skilled labor to do so. And then it is, like you mentioned, put into a mold and formed, and it has one thermo cycle. And hopefully that goes well. If not, then it is landfill, right? So it’s labor intensive. It is energy intensive. And, you know, obviously, with many things, when you involve the more hands you get involved, potentially, the more issues you can have as well. Obviously, there are very skilled factories at this too, right? Like, I mean, we all ride carbon, most of us ride carbon frame bikes, so they work great.

Jeff Barber 2:50
Yeah, so when you’re talking about that material, like, sort of that carbon fiber fabric you mentioned, it needs to be refrigerated, which I guess a lot of people probably don’t realize that. And also, when you’re laying it up, is it like multiple layers, like, do you just put one layer of this carbon fiber material, or are you sort of layering it in to kind of get these different properties out of the thing you’re trying to make?

Travis Tomczak 3:17
Yeah, great question. Yeah, you’re going to layer it up. And I’m not an engineer, right? But like, there are different theories on it, on how you would layer up your carbon fiber, where it needs to be, and that generally creates whatever the right quality is that you’re looking for, stiffness, weight, compliance, etc.

Jeff Barber 3:40
Yeah. Okay, so you know, this process obviously has been around for a long time. I mean, bike stuff has been made from carbon fiber for a long time. I don’t know the history about it, but I feel like maybe it was frames first that we saw, like probably late ’90s-ish. But the process has been around. The materials have been around. What are some of the challenges associated with carbon fiber manufacturing as it sort of has traditionally been done?

Travis Tomczak 4:09
Yeah, I mean, carbon fiber, I think we’re roughly, I mean, don’t quote me on it, but I guess it’s probably been about three decades, and it’s been done the same way. And, yeah, the challenges, I mean, I kind of mentioned them a little bit before, but, I mean, we’ve seen it go in stages, right? And originally, carbon fiber was very expensive, you know, and then obviously scales of economy and more factories and, you know, figuring out efficiencies and etc. have brought that price point considerably, not in all cases, down, but it has where an entry level road bike or whatever used to always be alloy, or another material. Now it is carbon, right? But the challenges of traditional thermoset manufacturing is it is labor intensive. So again, that is why much of it is done in Asia. It has specific properties, too, from a performance aspect, that create challenges when, specifically we’re talking about, you know, in our case today, we’re talking about wheels, of whether you’re going to have to sacrifice something to get an end result. And then there’s certainly the unfortunate sustainability, responsible manufacturing challenge of it. It is very dirty, you know, uses a lot of toxins. It uses a ton of energy. It is extremely wasteful. You know, there’s a lot of landfill scrap, and it lives for a long time. You know, it’s not biodegradable.

Jeff Barber 6:01
Yeah, yeah, good points. And, yeah, so carbon fiber too. I mean, obviously, you know, I think the first thing that people saw it as being useful for was to make bike components lighter, lighter weight. And it does a really good job at that, and then it’s also, it can be very stiff. But are there limitations in terms of the performance of it? Like we’ve heard that you can kind of adjust the layups and things like that to get various material properties that you want out of carbon fiber. But I’m wondering if there are other performance limitations in terms of, like, the bonding materials and that sort of thing that carbon faces?

Travis Tomczak 6:49
Yeah, for sure. And again, speaking, you know, this is on the traditional carbon side of where you run into these challenges. I mean, we’ve seen it. You can make alloy super light, right? But the reason why the world, for now, at least, has moved, you know, has thought that carbon is a superior material is its strength to weight ratio, right? And then the idea that it can reduce vibrations and things like that in the ride. And speaking, I’ll speak to wheels, right? Because that’s what we’re doing. And, you know, I don’t want to pretend I know how to make a bike frame or anything like that. At the moment, in the wheel aspect, like one of those things I mentioned before, too, is the challenges of manufacturing and using thermoset with a wheel, and we’ll talk a mountain wheel. Like, the attributes you’re generally looking for is like you want a wheel that’s going to provide you confidence. It needs to be durable, right? It can’t break underneath. It needs to provide confidence or control. So you want a wheel that tracks really well, right? And then you also want a wheel that is stiff, you want it to hold you up in the corners. And you want your energy transfer to, you know, when you put into the pedals, you want it to come out, right? And that is a big challenge too of traditional thermoset products where you can make a wheel that is, you know, often the term is used, the term that’s used is compliancy, or a compliant wheel, right? And that wheel, that’s often why you see the modern shape of wheels too out there. We use the term kind of a pancake shape, where they’ve become much flatter. And that’s to get a wheel that is more compliant. So in that straight line rock garden element, you get the ride characteristic that you get is that, or you’re targeting, is that it doesn’t ping off of things. Now you can do that in thermoset. You can get that wheel. Some of us may have ridden wheels that are, you know, truly very compliant. You know, for an example, the Zipp Moto. So that’s a very compliant wheel in a straight line and tracks well in that straight line. And then on the other side, you can make a wheel, like, if we remember, you know, previous generation, even some current generation, again, thermoset, like downhill wheels. They’re really stiff, and it has that shape that’s like a deeper dish wheel, right? Because it needs to be really strong, and because those guys are putting a lot of torque on the wheels and then in the corners, etc. The unfortunate side of thermoset in that scenario is you really can’t have both. Okay, you get one or the other.

Jeff Barber 9:57
So, yeah, and it’s dictated by the shape, not the material.

Travis Tomczak 10:01
No, it’s both. So okay, if you want that stiff feeling, you got to go for the shape. If you want that compliant feeling, I mean, that is also by the shape, but that’s due to the nature of thermoset, right? Okay, so yes, you’re limited, from an engineering standpoint, by the shape. Again, I’m not an engineer, so some engineer may argue some element of that, but for the most part, that material, a thermoset base, is going to drive you to having to use a specific shape, or, you know, inspire a shape to get the right quality. So what that means is, again, you can have a wheel that feels great in a straight line, but then when you throw it in a corner, it’s going to fold or flex quite a bit underneath you. On the flip side, you can build a wheel that is very stiff and going to hold up in the corners. However it will, you’ll get that pingy feel, which we’ve all probably felt from a carbon wheel as well.

Jeff Barber 11:02
Yeah. Okay, interesting. So now let’s get into Fusion Fiber and talk about how it’s different from traditional thermoset carbon fiber. Let’s start with the materials. What’s different about the materials in a Fusion Fiber product?

Travis Tomczak 11:20
Yeah. So this is the primary, or, yeah, one of a few of the primary differences. And then this is where it gets complicated to describe, or for often it to understand as it is still a carbon wheel, is still a carbon material, right? And because carbon’s been made the same way for 30 years, people are like, what? Why? How? We are truly, I mean, to use a cliche term, reinventing the wheel. So the Fusion Fiber starts with a different matrix, okay? So the base material still has carbon fiber in it, okay? However, the bonding agent in current Fusion Fiber is nylon, okay, as opposed to epoxy. So then, actually, like, you know, I mentioned that a thermoset material has to be refrigerated, has a curing point, that’s because of the epoxy, okay, right? Our base material can sit on a pallet at room temperature and is unaffected and has no shelf life, okay? And because of that, it actually, and hence our name, Forge and Bond, it actually goes through multiple thermo cycles to get our end product. Think about it. I mean, this is a very elementary way of looking at it. But like, if you take a plastic bottle and you heat it up, you can form it, right? And then you heat it up again, you can change its shape again, and you can keep doing that, right? So, and then, if you think about like taking your most basic Home Depot epoxy, like JB Weld, once it’s set, it’s set, right? There’s no heating it up, changing it again. So the difference in the base material, with that nylon being the bonding agent, as opposed to epoxy, then what also makes Fusion Fiber is the process, and that is a really high tech, advanced process that is primarily robotic. There are very few hands that are involved in the process. Basically, the tape goes into a specific machine that lays it up per a computer generated program. So where that would typically take many hands to lay that up, we lay it up in what we call a radial cross ply, and that affects the strength of the wheel, the ride qualities we’re looking for. So that radial cross ply is much like 45, 90 degree angles. And when it comes out of that machine, it is already in a circular shape. Then it goes into another machine. It is bonded. It is heated up again, so another thermo cycle, and it comes out basically like sheet metal. Okay, so you have a flat sheet metal shape that’s in a circle. Then it goes into another forge, so over a mold, and gets pressed out, heated and pressed down, and that becomes, you have half a rim. At that point, you got to do some trimmings, which, again, all the trimmings from at this stage get thrown into basically a wood chipper. And that material that we call chop is used into other goods for Forge and Bond. Right now, that’s a tire lever. But we also sell that material off to adjacent companies. We have aerospace companies and prosthetics and things like that where it can be used. So it’s truly a circular product path. And then you do, you know, so we’ve made one side of a rim. We do it again, and then we put a spoke bed in there and bond it actually together again using heat and pressure. And that’s roughly a wheel.

Jeff Barber 15:34
Okay, cool. So, yeah, I mean, it sounds like it’s still the same carbon fiber fibers that you’re starting with. The difference is the bonding agent, the thing that glues it all together, that gives it sort of its shape. And then the other difference is that it’s formed into a sheet first, like, you’re not putting into a mold that is, let’s say, the shape of a rim. You’re not putting these, like, you know, flexible sheets of carbon and then pouring the liquid epoxy in. What you’re actually doing is you’re starting with a sheet that’s already bonded. It’s got that nylon and the carbon fiber together, and then you’re actually shaping that sheet. Is that kind of a good explanation?

Travis Tomczak 16:22
Yeah. That’s pretty accurate, yeah. It, we call it a tape. It basically does come in this spool, and that is already carbon impregnated with nylon. And that’s the material. That’s it. Again, it’s not done in the manner of how we mentioned before, like a textile, where you do have the big sheet you got to cut it all out. We have a tape that goes on a spool. It goes into this machine and cuts it into smaller pieces. And it is already in the shape of a wheel. It is, you know, it is a circuit. It’s a donut, you know, there’s a hole in the middle and the rim is on the outside. So it’s not this massive sheet of carbon that we have to cut into multiple pieces. It’s really efficient. And there’s minimal waste.

Jeff Barber 17:19
Yeah, well, so, I mean, I guess we should mention, though, a lot of carbon now is not hand cut anymore. I mean, people are using laser cut. They’re using computer programs to kind of lay out, sort of the shape to minimize waste, and also, yeah, so the process, though, for Fusion Fiber is kind of like two parts, right? Like, where you’re making the rim is a different location than where this tape is being made. Is that accurate?

Travis Tomczak 17:47
That’s correct, yeah. The tape we get from a supplier in the US, and then it is shipped to Gunnison, Utah, central Utah, where everything is manufactured.

Jeff Barber 18:01
Okay, cool. So what are the performance advantages then, of Fusion Fiber over a traditional thermoset carbon fiber?

Travis Tomczak 18:10
Yeah. So we, you know, we touched on those ride characteristics of compliance and stiffness, on the pluses and minuses there of what you can achieve with thermoset. With Fusion Fiber and a thermoplastic wheel, the performance aspects that you get is you get the best of both worlds on that ride quality. You get a damp wheel, so it works legitimately like having a damper in your rear suspension of your bike as well. And then we are able to create the shape we want and format the wheel to give it, make it laterally stiff. And then also, because of that micro flexing that the nylon provides, it is very durable. It is more impact resistant. So you get mainly the things that most mountain bikers are looking for, a wheel that is more durable, a wheel that is, you know, to use the common term of compliant, you know, provides confidence or comfort, because it’s reducing the vibrations. It’s giving you more traction, and then, you know, the stiffness to hold you up in the corners.

Jeff Barber 19:25
Yeah, well, I mean, for me too, like, I kind of think about the materials and like, carbon fiber, that resin, once it’s cured, you know, it’s quite stiff. It’s quite, you know, it almost feels brittle. And I think that’s what people, especially when carbon fiber first came out in bike stuff, people were worried, like, oh, how is this stuff going to fail? Is it just going to like shatter? And, you know, again, the material feels like that.

Travis Tomczak 19:52
I’m not going to say it’s brittle, but there is a different, so a thermoset wheel compared to a Fusion Fiber wheel. So when they break, I mean, we take everything in testing right to its point of failure, and they are, the response is different, right? So that initial onset, when I say initial onset, that’s when the anvil drops, and that’s when the wheel has been technically compromised. The initial onset point for where we have tested competitive thermoset wheels, that wheel is completely toast. Yeah, I mean it, and that’s the scary part of generally riding carbon wheels, right? And as mountain bikers, we’ve seen it. We’ve all watched, seen the videos and seen that catastrophic failure. And that is, that’s all, I think, in almost every mountain biker’s back of mind when they ride a carbon wheel, right? That this could fail and fail horribly.

Jeff Barber 20:54
Whereas the nylon material is like what you would find on like a saddle base, for example. They’ve been using nylon for years for that. And most of us can kind of imagine, like, we know what a saddle base feels like. It’s kind of flexible. Nylon is also used for pedals, the like composite pedals that a lot of people run. And so, yeah, is it like a similar material in terms of its chemical makeup, the polymer that you’re using for Fusion Fiber, or is it tweaked a little bit?

Travis Tomczak 21:27
You know what? I’m not sure. I got a feeling, my guess is probably not. I think those are probably way more plastic or nylon in those layups than what we’re using, just again, because of the structural element that it needs, right? You need your saddle to flex way more than a wheel. But again, I don’t know.

Jeff Barber 21:52
Right. And it’s a polymer, and so it can be like chemically altered to give it those different properties, I guess.

Travis Tomczak 22:00
100%. Yeah, you can have different percentages. You can also, because it is a polymer, it could be a different polymer, right? Like, there are a lot of different polymers out there, so I don’t know. But back to that failure point, the Fusion Fiber, when it hits, you know, is hit that initial onset by the anvil, it just means that, in our situation, it just shows that it was compromised. At times, that wheel is still holding the tire, is even still holding air. And then we take it well beyond that and give it multiple more hits till we say that it’s at its ultimate point. But that never, in my experience, has ever been to the point of absolute catastrophic failure, right? Like it is, it’s a cracked wheel. That’s like, if you had to roll out, you can roll out. And in testing, been through that personally, you know? And, yeah, you know, rode a wheel off a drop, hit a square edge rock. And, you know, this was before, obviously a production wheel or whatever, and, and, yeah, lost tire pressure. And, you know, I’m going to see if this thing can do it again and rolled right off at the exact same rock in the exact same place, and the wheel just kept rolling and rolled. Rode the bike out for two miles, you know, the tire was still on, but like, no air and it rolled, it was still round.

Jeff Barber 23:33
Wow. So is it more expensive to manufacture rims from Fusion Fiber than carbon? I’m looking at, like a Forge and Bond EM 30 wheel set is like $2600, which is a slight premium over, like, say, a set from Reynolds or Industry Nine. So is it the performance that you’re getting, or is it the manufacturing process that’s more difficult? Like, what’s kind of the price difference between them?

Travis Tomczak 24:01
Yeah, so, I mean, that’s a great question. It gets asked a lot, right? And especially when you don’t have the half an hour to explain the difference between thermoset and everything. There is initial, we are doing something that nobody has ever done before, right? And to our knowledge, making a hollow form, a structural hollow form, out of thermoplastic, we are the only ones that we are aware of that have done so. And there is initial, there’s quite a bit of investment costs in that, right? We have machines that are very, you know, all this automated elements and the figuring out how to do it, these machines are really expensive and very rare. And so there’s that cost. There is the US manufacturing cost, right? I mean, this is the cost of making something in the US and employing, paying people decent wages, and you know, providing benefits and doing the right thing, right? That is there. And, like we started the conversation, you know, originally, general carbon bikes were really expensive, right? So it takes time for, you know, for things to grow and scale and figure out the efficiencies and to overcome those initial investment costs and whatnot. So, yeah, that’s where it’s at. You know, there is also, you pay for an element of craftsmanship, right? There as well. Like there, I mean, when you talk about those other, a lot of our competitors, I mean, you really break it down, the process and materials and those things are all the same, right? Like they’re made the exact same way, with roughly the same materials. You’re paying for an engineering expertise and a quality that you presume is there behind X brand, right? And that’s most consumer goods out there, right? Like, I mean, why is X more expensive than Y? And it’s often because there’s, you know, a level of craftsmanship that’s behind one or the other or technology. And that is also there with Forge and Bond. You are paying for a level of technology that only we can currently provide, and that is not only the fact that it’s recyclable, but there is a performance aspect to that.

Jeff Barber 26:39
Yeah, yeah, and made in the US, so for sure, all of that kind of adds up. Yeah, and that’s a big part of it. So one of the selling points for Fusion Fiber is that it’s recyclable. So is it, like infinitely recyclable, or is it going to degrade each time you go through? You mentioned that Forge and Bond has tire levers, but like, could you take the scraps and turn them into a new rim or do you need to kind of downgrade it to something like a tire lever?

Travis Tomczak 27:06
So it’s a complex question, because yes and no. The material is recyclable. So like I mentioned in the process, when any trimmings that come from the initial raw material, those get chopped up. If a wheel breaks in testing or whatever, say we overheated it and compromised it or something, it does not go into landfill. It also gets thrown in the wood chipper and chopped down. Now those fibers have gotten shorter, right, when we’ve chopped it down, so it cannot be made into a wheel. But it, like, for example, it can be made into the tire lever. It goes into other goods outside of our space that are technically more expensive. So it can be up-cycled, down-cycled. And there is a world where, potentially, you have a hybrid, you know, you make something that is using both virgin material and part of this chop, the recycled material. So technically, it’s up, down and horizontal. And then, you ask the question, is it infinitely recyclable? No, but the material can be, it can be recycled up to eight times. Okay, so it can be heated, chopped, you know, that tire lever can be thrown back into the wood chipper, made into another product. And it’s just finding that end usage. And then, I mean, most of these things eight times, right? Like, that’s well beyond our lifetime.

Jeff Barber 28:43
Yeah, that’s, I mean, on par with other plastic materials, right? Like a milk jug. You can only recycle that so many times, and eventually it kind of reaches the end of its life cycle. And then also, I guess what we’re saying too, is, because those carbon fibers are getting chopped up, it’s no longer like a structural material, necessarily, unless it is like a smaller scale kind of item, I guess.

Travis Tomczak 29:09
Yes, and no. I mean, there are, again, I’m not an engineer, but I mean, straight up you could make linkage. So, you know, there’s things of that nature that could be made.

Jeff Barber 29:22
Yeah, interesting. Yeah, it will be cool to definitely see the things that are made from that material. Is there anywhere that people can recycle their Fusion Fiber rims currently? Can they send them back to Forge and Bond or, like, what’s sort of the process for that?

Travis Tomczak 29:37
Yeah, so we do it all in house. Yeah, if, unfortunately, something happened. And you know, we have a lifetime warranty. And you know, it’s really an easy process, just contact us and we’ll take care of you. And, yeah, you send us the wheels. We’re obviously going to inspect it and learn from it. And then throw them in the wood chipper.

Jeff Barber 30:01
Okay, cool. Yeah. And so, yeah, we mentioned that, like, failure of rims and damaged rims that people happen to break in one way or another. What is the process like? How are you guys sort of cataloging that? And what can you learn from a failure of a rim?

Travis Tomczak 30:20
Yeah, it’s a good question. I mean, to be honest, we don’t, I mean, we’re, one, we’re very new, right? So, yeah.

Jeff Barber 30:27
Fortunately, not a lot of failures to learn from, yet.

Travis Tomczak 30:31
Yeah, yeah, and hopefully never. I mean, in all reality, your failure rate should be, you know, less than 1%, right? Your warranty rate. That’s a warranty rate. You know, obviously we do all our internal testing, and we have some of the world’s best athletes and stuff. So we go through stages of testing product to see where the limits are on all sides, whether that’s weight or strength, and what’s going to work. So in that process, yeah, we take things to failure. And there’s a lot to learn there, right? That’s discovering of materials, new materials, different polymers, you know, different layups, different rim shapes, different widths. You know, if you take a look at the EM 30 sidewall, that’s a four millimeter thick sidewall, you know, where a lot of rims are, you know, half that.

Jeff Barber 31:27
And that’s good for reducing pinch flats, right?

Travis Tomczak 31:31
Exactly, yeah. And that’s something we, you know, we learn from testing and failure and riding, yeah.

Jeff Barber 31:38
Interesting. Well, I mean, we’ve been talking a lot about, obviously, you’re representing Forge and Bond. And we’re talking about Fusion Fiber, which is a material, right? Like it’s not Forge and Bond’s material. It’s, I believe CSS Composites is the company that sort of, I don’t know what’s the word, they make it. They designed it, Fusion Fiber. Is that the right?

Travis Tomczak 32:03
Yeah, so CSS is a manufacturer, right? Okay, you know, that’s the easiest way to look at it. Kind of another business example would be like looking at Gore-Tex a bit. So like Fusion Fiber is Gore-Tex.

Jeff Barber 32:23
Right. The material, yeah.

Travis Tomczak 32:25
So in that sense, and that’s where Fusion Fiber is being used in numerous other places, outside of bike wheels, you know. CSS specifically is bike wheels and Forge and Bond, but, yeah, there’s a lot of other spaces in automotive and motorsports and aerospace where this material is being utilized.

Jeff Barber 32:56
Yeah, yeah. And other brands are using Fusion Fiber. You know, we actually first saw Fusion Fiber in wheels from, I think maybe it was Revel or was it Evil. I know both of them are using Fusion Fiber. So, like, what was the thinking behind, sort of, like licensing, or maybe not licensing, like selling the material to other brands versus creating, like, you know, a brand that’s owned by CSS Composites?

Travis Tomczak 33:29
Yeah. Really good question. I wasn’t there at CSS when the original business format was developed. So CSS is the manufacturer of Evil wheels, of Revel, and that’s why, you know, they’re done with Fusion Fiber, Chris King as well. Now I can tell you why Forge and Bond was created within that portfolio. And that was basically, Forge and Bond is the advanced, best way to put is, it’s the advanced concepts group of CSS. So knowing the capabilities, I mean Fusion Fiber, thermoplastics, like that is our expertise, right? And that is our only focus. We’re not trying to be a hub brand or a bike brand or whatever else, right? We want to show the world and evolve the production of thermoplastics and with our own brand that lets us do it how we want to do it, move at the pace we want to move at, go the places we want to go and try the things that we want to try, right?

Jeff Barber 34:46
Yeah, and so you kind of alluded to it multiple times, I think, during our conversation, that for now, Fusion Fiber is something that’s being used for bike rims. But potentially, are there other uses? And in particular, like, if there are other uses, do you need to, like, tweak the material or the process, or, like, what’s kind of the path toward maybe seeing Fusion Fiber in things like handlebars or bike frames?

Travis Tomczak 35:16
Yeah, I mean the possibilities, I’m not going to say they’re endless, but it’s vast. It’s vast, both from examples you just mentioned to again, the amount of things we could potentially make out of recycle material too, right? And the processes, there are some that will be very, very similar, and some will be different. So I don’t know exactly how to answer the question 100% but the answer is certainly yes. I’m not going to, I can’t mention exactly where we’re going, but I’ve clearly alluded to things, and if you notice too, we do mention ourselves as a component brand, not just a wheel brand, right? So yes, certainly wheels are our focus, and that line will be one of the elements that grows the fastest for us. So you know, stay tuned. Yeah, for sure, cool. We are not just an enduro wheel and a gravel wheel brand. We will have more offerings.

Jeff Barber 36:30
Yeah, yeah, that makes sense. Well, yeah. Well, what is next that you can tell us for Forge and Bond? Are we going to see in the near future other wheel sizes, or wheel options, or what’s kind of like the near term plan?

Travis Tomczak 36:46
Yeah, as I mentioned, we’re targeted to be a full line, you know, full line wheel program. Okay, I can say that with confidence. So you name it, we’ll have it for you. And the breadth of the line, you know, from different categories to different entry points as well, the line will get significantly larger quickly.

Jeff Barber 37:12
Yeah, cool. Well, Travis, thanks so much for talking to us about carbon fiber manufacturing and how Forge and Bond and Fusion Fiber is kind of taking this to the next level and developing a whole new process. Yeah, definitely learned a lot. So thanks.

Travis Tomczak 37:32
Yeah, likewise, Jeff, it was a pleasure. Thanks for having us.

Jeff Barber 37:35
Well, you can find out more about the wheels that Forge and Bond is selling on their website. We’ll have a link to that in the show notes, and you can also check out some good information on their website about the process behind Fusion Fiber and how all of that works. So that’s it for this week. We’ll talk to you again next week.