

Recycled Cardboard Bicycles For $9? - jackau
http://nocamels.com/2012/07/recycled-cardboard-bicycles-for-9/

======
pmccool
"In an interview with Newsgeek, Gafni said that the production cost for his
recycled bicycles is around $9-12 each, and he estimates it could be sold to a
consumer for $60 to 90, depending on what parts they choose to add."

Assuming they're talking US dollars, that's roughly the price of a bike from
the supermarket. Granted, it'll be a truly dreadful bike, but it'll be OK as
basic transport. I don't understand the emphasis on cheapness. Making cheap
bikes is a solved problem.

Don't get me wrong, I think a cardboard bike is cool. I'd be particularly
interested to hear about what they've done about things like bearings and
attaching tyres.

The green side of it is interesting, as is the idea of an explicitly
disposable bike. If it's easier to manufacture locally, or on a small scale or
whatever, that'd be something. But a bike for $60-90 is not a new idea.
They're out there right now.

~~~
R_Edward
It's interesting, I suppose, to know that his production cost is $9-12, but
that's really pointless, isn't it? The important figure to know is what it's
going to cost me to get my hands on one. That's the $60-90 figure. Which makes
bizarre the later paragraph about it being pointless to lock up a cheap bike
like this, because the lock is going to cost more than the bicycle it purports
to secure.

Excuse me? I'm sure bike locks exist that cost a Century or more, but I've
never bought one. The locks I buy cost $10-20, which is still well below the
purchase price of one of these cycles. And even if I could somehow buy one for
the $12 production cost, I'd still lock it up. Because in addition to the
annoyance of having lost my $12 possession, now I also have the inconvenience
of having to call someone for a ride, or pay for cab fare.

~~~
apendleton
Maybe you don't live in a city with a big bike theft problem? Here in DC,
where I live, there are kids who wander around with bolt cutters lifting bikes
from bike racks, and at least in my experience, they're just as likely to go
for a cheap bike as an expensive one, so you pretty much have to have a bolt-
cutter-proof lock, regardless of your bike, if you don't want to get it
stolen, which means a tempered steel U lock. I've never seen one of those for
$10. It's especially frustrating because while the old rule of thumb was that
you should spend 10% of the value of the bike on a lock, there's a floor of
about $30, at least here, because of how easy it is to defeat cheap locks,
which means you end up way over-spending on locks if you ride a cheap bike.

The goal here, as I understand it, is to make the bikes _so_ cheap that
there's no resale market for either the bikes or the parts, which might mean a
"keeps honest men honest" $10 lock would be good enough.

------
curveship
If you look closely in the video, the front brake has never been used. There
are no scuff marks on the rim, and brake pads always make scuff marks.

I suspect that if he used the front brake, it would crush the rim. This is one
of the big engineering challenges for companies making rims out of carbon
fiber: the compression forces from the brake pads can reach up to a thousand
psi, because the brake levers provide mechanical advantage and the pads are so
small. If that's not enough, the sheer forces can also cause the fibers to
separate.

Building bikes out of cardboard is a very cool idea, and I wish him luck, but
I think what we're seeing here is a very early and probably still unsafe
prototype. There are many engineering challenges to be solved still.

I'd be interested in seeing a cardboard bike frame that was built from molded
pieces rather than cut and glued prefab sheets. This is how modern carbon
fiber bikes are constructed. I would think that a lot of that tech could cross
over.

~~~
lukeholder
thats a big assumption to make from a video. I am not engineer, but isn't
there other methods for brakes other than rubber on metal?

~~~
AUmrysh
I'm sure you could use the actual drive chain (it looks like a cogged belt) to
slow the vehicle down by removing energy from the rear wheel. My guess is that
the front brake is only used for emergencies, and the bike works as a fixed-
gear.

see this about stopping a fixed-gear bike:
<http://howto.wired.com/wiki/Stop_a_Fixed_Gear_Bicycle>

------
patdennis
_The primary use, like any bicycle, is to prevent pollution while encouraging
physical activity and exercise._

I don't know about other people, but my primary use for my bicycle is
transportation.

Edit: Also, does anyone else think that disposable bikes are a step backwards,
not forwards, in terms of environmental responsibility?

~~~
freiheit
For a "real" bike (the kind you buy for $500 US or more from a shop that
basically just does bikes, or buy used): yes

For a "department store" bike aka "bicycle shaped object" (the kind you buy
for $100-$300 from Walmart, Sears, Costco or another store that doesn't
actually have anybody that knows how to properly assemble a bike): no.

Those department store bikes are estimated to average something like 75 miles
of use in their lifetime (showroom floor to landfill) and are generally not
made to be very serviceable.

So if we assume that a $60 cardboard bike is intended to compete with $100
disposable bikes, it's probably still a good step forwards.

~~~
Retric
IMO 500+$ bikes are far more about fun/ego than transportation. A cheap bike
that let's you comfortably travel 3 miles and not really care if there stolen
is worth a lot. A bike that weighs 10lb's less but is more likely to be stolen
and costs 2-3 times as much is far less useful.

~~~
comicjk
Even for short distances, a better device is more pleasant to use. Not
sweating is worth a lot if you can't shower at your destination.

And what if you want to travel 10 miles? Or 50? Carry more cargo, climb
steeper hills? I think you should adopt this moderate position from a
competing industry: "your mileage may vary."

~~~
DanBC
> _a better device is more pleasant to use._

A cardboard bike is probably not great. Bt getting people on bikes is
important. If they have an okay experience on a lousy $10 cardboard bike then
there's a chance that they go on a buy a bike and use it.

And, like everything else, there's a lot of nonsense spoken about bikes.

Most people do not need carbon fibre frames and titanium widgets etc.

------
sopooneo
This seems cool and fun, and potentially a great engineering exercise. That
is, you have to build around the properties of your material. But from an
environmental and economic perspective I am deeply unconvinced. A _simple_ but
well made and well maintained bicycle can be quite cheap and perform extremely
efficiently for decades.

I used to fix bikes and old Raliegh three speeds were just the most amazing
machines I've ever dealt with. Replace the rubber parts, true the wheels, and
tighten the brakes and they are good to go again... thirty or forty years
after they rolled off the assembly line. _That_ is efficient.

------
maayank
A very nice video and story, but I would just like to highlight something. He
says that he realized "there's no real know-how about how to work with
cardboard beside making packages out of it".

I don't know if to say it's standard, but in industrial engineering there's
certainly knowledge about it. For example: [http://smarterware.org/890/the-
office-made-entirely-of-cardb...](http://smarterware.org/890/the-office-made-
entirely-of-cardboard)

~~~
agumonkey
Static structures VS Dynamic Ones I guess. That said the video doesn't show
details about transmissions, gears, etc..

------
Derbasti
I'd be interested if cardboard is easier to work with than metal. I have this
vision of a huge machine that basically eats waste paper and stamps out
bicycles like paper cups.

You know, something that you could buy on a vacation trip for 20-30$ and just
discard at the end. It would not need to be very durable. In fact, it would be
fine if it lasted a few weeks. After that, it is biodegradeable paper waste.

~~~
sopooneo
But what is the nature of the failure? If the way you know the bike is ready
to throw out is that it collapses underneath you, that's no good.

~~~
pavel_lishin
I imagine that for $20, the way you know the bike is ready to throw out is
that you've been riding it for more than a week on vacation.

~~~
sopooneo
Sure, but why not keep it? Why not have them for normal bikes? Probably
because they don't last. So _how_ don't they last? By getting mushy and hard
to pedal? That's fine. By collapsing underneath you? That's not.

And if they do exhibit catastrophic failure and just _average_ a weeks
lifespan, that's a non-starter, because maybe you collapse into the curb the
second day you're riding one.

~~~
pavel_lishin
> Sure, but why not keep it?

Basically for the reason you gave: "So how don't they last? By collapsing
underneath you?"

Planned obsolescence is a pretty old and valid concept. We specifically throw
away many things before they get the chance to fail us catastrophically -
drugs, brakes, etc.

> average a weeks lifespan

A week was a random number I pulled out of my hat, since that's a typical
vacation length for me. Naturally the average would be much longer.

------
jeremymims
There's a company in New Haven, CT that makes furniture out of cardboard. It's
surprisingly strong but I wouldn't jump on it:

<http://www.chairigami.com>

My concern with cardboard is that there is going to be some lower breaking
point (especially the fork portion of the bike) due to the stress of riding it
on uneven surfaces, debris getting caught in the spokes, or because of user
motion. Carbon fiber forks have failed before causing catastrophic injury and
death. Depending on tests, it may be an accident waiting to happen.

------
pikewood
I wonder how much of the strength comes from cardboard and how much comes from
the glue. Wood glue is stronger than wood, so is the cardboard just a lattice
for a PVA shell?

I guess it could use a similar principal in carbon fiber reinforced polymer,
with cardboard taking the place of the carbon fiber and glue taking place of
the polymers.

It also reminds me of wood turners who "fill voids" with cyanoacrylate glue so
much that the main material they're turning is the CA glue itself.

------
Trezoid
My biggest concerns are how it handles impacts and how it stops. I can just
see it folding just like cardboard if it ever hit something and emergency
stopping, especially in the wet, could cause all kinds of painful and
expensive problems.

~~~
mootothemax
_I can just see it folding just like cardboard if it ever hit something and
emergency stopping, especially in the wet, could cause all kinds of painful
and expensive problems._

To be fair, if you want to avoid painful and expensive problems on a bike, the
only viable option is to not have the accident in the first place. If you hit
something at any noticeable speed, you're going to bend your forks, and it's
also pretty easy to bend your wheel beyond repair.

If you get into racing bikes, it _really_ doesn't take much for bits to break.

I've ridden mountain bikes with hydraulic brakes, and racing bikes with those
tiny blocks. Whilst you definitely stop faster with the former, I didn't have
any issues with the racing bike brakes, so I'd imagine that the brakes on
these should be fine.

------
lsunden
Stanford has been using paper bicycle design as an exercise for aspiring
product designers for years now.
([http://www.stanford.edu/group/me310/me310_2011/fun.html?fid=...](http://www.stanford.edu/group/me310/me310_2011/fun.html?fid=4))

I admire the guy trying to make this concept into a product, though they
ultimately may be to the bike world as IKEA is to furniture (accessible but
unfortunately hugely disposable)

------
stcredzero
Interesting topic, but Onswipe sites freaking suck. Do they actually test on
the iPad? This Onswipe page crashes Safari on my iPad.

------
lsc
this is interesting; I mean, it's not cheaper than a used bike, but buying a
good used bike in that price range is a whole lot more work than a trip to
wal-mart, and usually requires a fair bit of tune-up work before it's ready to
go.

I recently had my mid '70s early '80s junk steel frame bike stolen from the
parking structure beneath my condo. I wondered why someone bothered; I mean,
when I put the bike away it had two flat tires and badly needed a tune-up; And
it was stolen from a bike rack that was packed with mostly better-looking
bikes.

I mean, two flat tires; it's not like they were just looking for a quick ride
to the liquor store.

But yeah, there is value to a cheap bike I could pull off the rack and just
use, something easier to get working than a used bike. (speaking of, I'm
looking for another <$100 steel-frame bike if anyone is getting rid of
something.)

------
teju
Where did everyone get the idea that it was "disposable"? All I got from the
article/video was that it was made of recycled material.

I would like to know how durable this bike is, and how much energy is saved by
using recycled cardboard versus a metal sourced by mining.

------
kristopolous
The "Cheap as an anti-theft mechanism" hypothesis has interested me in a
while. I don't know how true it is though.

I see the cost/benefit argument, sure. But then again, thieves come in all
stripes.

~~~
brc
The problem with the cheap-as-anti-theft means non-theft can be replaced with
vandalism.

I've seen plenty of old worthless bikes lying destroyed by vandals, sometimes
still chained to a fence.

------
js2
Non-swipe: [http://nocamels.com/2012/07/recycled-cardboard-bicycles-
for-...](http://nocamels.com/2012/07/recycled-cardboard-bicycles-
for-9/?onswipe_redirect=never)

------
mootothemax
Is it right to expect this bike to be pretty lightweight compared to the
normally quite hefty cheap bikes that are for sale at present? If so, that's
quite a nice innovation in itself.

------
dkroy
This would be great if you were on vacation or just visiting a city, and
wanted a cheap mode of transportation that you wouldn't feel guilty for
leaving behind.

------
olsn
I didn't see this in the article, but does anyone know how much the bike
actually weights?

