Alpha is a custom designed bicycle meant to challenge the standard for commuter cycling and lead the way to new innovations within the industry of bike components. It was created for my senior design project with a team of 4 other engineers. We worked for over 2000 hours to design and fabricate Alpha.
The main attributes of the bike are a fully enclosed belt drive system for powering the rear wheel, an electro-mechanical clutch to switch between freewheel and fixed gear riding, and an integrated electronics package which feeds out data to both a handle bar mounted LCD and an SD card.
I was responsible for designing the drive system which includes the SWIFT (Switchable Integrate Free/Fixed Transmission). It took me over 700 hours to design and manufacture the components with the help of one of my team mates. We are now in the process of patenting the SWIFT system and other novel piece of Alpha.
Our team won both the mechanical engineering and all engineering school competitions and was featured on Wired, Core 77, Gizmodo, Engadget and many more! Visit the website for Alpha for more detailed information about its conception, development and future.
SWIFT installed in the custom bottom bracket
Here is the final presentation video given to a team of judges, faculty and students at the all Engineering School Senior Design Competition.