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Welkom bij Eerder Metaal & Rijwieltechniek Hartelijke groet, Vincent van Eerd About me: I've been riding almost exclusively on folding bikes and cargo bikes since 1993. I have a mechanical engineering background. Did a secondary and higher vocational education, not sure what the English call it, but a more practical course and a more theoretical one. Making 8 years in total. I've worked as a mechanical engineer doing CAD work and as a 3D CAD designer at the Sparta Bicycle factory in Apeldoorn mainly working on a folding bike for the Accell group based on my own idea of a compact folder with 24" wheels, which later got patented by Sparta with me being mentioned as the (proud) inventor. https://www.eerdermetaal.nl/eerder_concept.html and: https://www.eerdermetaal.nl/eerder.html This folding bike design was meant to be used by different Accell group companies , but it sadly never got that far. After three years of design work the end result was launched as the Batavus Nova Versa which was produced by Dahon and nothing like the original design except the looks from a distance. It was just too complex to be added to the 'Dahon made' line up of folding bikes without putting a lot of time and money in it. Probably the Accell and Sparta management wasn't so much into folding bikes after all, otherwise they would have spent more effort to get it into production. The Accell folding bike project was put to a stop. They fired me and the R&D department manager who did amazing work for the Sparta Ion pedelec bike. My first son was born and I went on to the next phase in my carreer, which was 5 years of being a local bike shop mechanic and Brompton specialist. In the meantime starting my own business in bespoke stabilizers (training wheels) for kids with a developmental delay and adults, mainly elderly people. I did that from 2004-2019. Since 2004 I've also been designing and fabricating Brompton modifications like the stabiliser bridge, the repair bridge and the telescopic stem. I started a Brompton dealership in the business unit next to the workshop in 2015 and ended the dealership 6 years later at the end of 2020. Me and my colleagues were quite successful and respected by customers from quite a big area as we were specialized in just Brompton and a Brompton was never too worn to not be refurbished. But I just wasn't very happy with the changed dealer terms and conditions initiated by Brompton. One of my colleagues moved to Italy and I felt the need to just focus on my own designs of parts and conversions all based on the Brompton folding principle and their main frames. I've learned the basics of welding and brazing during both my educations, but never was really good at it. You didn't get the time to get good at it. There was more focus on working with a lathe and mill and that was also what I liked best. So I basically taught myself to weld Mig and Tig and braze silver and bronze. My father, being a retired gold smith, occasionally gives me some brazing tips and I've obviously asked other frame builders for advice, but mostly it's a matter of getting a lot of torch time to get the hang of it. Investing in tooling was done along the course of the years when I ran into limitations of the old machines or just wanted something I didn't have before and would make my life easier. But I still believe the only things you really need (to get started) are a vise, cordless drill, angle grinder, a bunch of files, a welder and a lathe. Since I started working on my first folding bike design in 1998 (Video:'Life unfolding') I have been a believer in bigger wheels than 16" , the Eerder and the Sparta Centerfold even had 24"wheels. Rear derailleurs don't hit the ground and break on 20"wheels or bigger and a bumpy road is less worse on bigger wheels. My first Brompton conversion of 2005 with derailleur gears still featured the original 16" wheels size. Being almost a full time stabilizer builder it took some 14 years for a serious follow up with disc brakes and a little more tyre clearance for 40 mm wide 349mm tyres. I went to the Brompton Benelux dealer conference in London with this fun ride in january 2019. I sold just a few of these conversions when I was asked to do a conversion with the smaller 16x305 wheel size but wider tyres and my answer was that I was interested in wider tyres but only with the marginally bigger 18" / 355 mm wheel size. After a few prototype forks and rear frames I discovered that it was (or seemed) a fairly small step to make it fit off road worthy 20" tyres as it already had room for narrow width 20" tyres without mudguards. So I completely redesigned the fork and rear frame again to make it fit 2.25" x 406" knobby tyres and room for mudguards. It was completed on February 26th of 2020 (save the date :-) and I have been further improving and refining the design ever since. In the three years following I have designed and made another 8 Xplorer bikes. Each of them with a little different frame set and folding details from the previous one. Hoping to build another 8 Xplorers in the coming years, but it's hard to find time for it as I'm so busy designing and fabricating accessories and specvial parts for the Brompton bike range. Ben Cooper from Kinetics in Glasgow Scotland also started offering so-called extended rear frames and forks and the MTB Brompton kit, so at some point I started sending my customers to Ben as he's far better in making his frame parts in volume... |
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Heb je de korte film 'Life unfolding' al gezien? (Een dag uit het leven van Vincent van Eerd) |
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Vincent van Eerd, © 2004 ... |
