Engineering stories: final assembly awaits

Aug 28, 2020

14 days of quarantine complete… time to prepare for final assembly of our first fleet of FLIT-16s!

Those of you that follow us on social media will know that Dave, our Technical Lead, is currently in Taiwan to visit our manufacturing partner. We’re lucky that Dave was granted a special visa to enter as travel restrictions are still very strict there. 

He spent 14 days quarantining in a hotel near the airport, contacting suppliers and making sure that everything is ready for final assembly. After two weeks with just his mini workstation and Maya (our blue demo bike) for company, Dave checked out of quarantine last Sunday and made his way to Taichung, the heart of bike manufacturing in Taiwan.

First stop: the frame factory

In our previous update, we had just begun welding some of the frame parts. Welding is now complete, and things are really taking shape.

Dave managed to capture the last few main frames as they came off the production line!

Next stop: the warehouse

Flit parts boxed up at the warehouse
Boxes of FLIT-16 components and parts, waiting to be assembled. 

What you may not realise is that the FLIT-16 is actually made in lots of different factories in Taichung, so parts are moved from one factory to the next as they go from being raw material to finished bike parts.

The warehouse is where these parts, along with components from other suppliers, are sent when they’re ready to be assembled into finished bikes (which happens in a separate assembly factory).

Because the factories are so busy at the moment, there is an unusually long waiting time. To speed things up, we are first putting some parts together in the warehouse into ‘sub-assemblies’. These will then be sent to the assembly factory to be put together into finished bikes, and prepared for shipping – Dave explains below.

Next stop: the paint factory

You’ll have noticed in the video above that the frame parts are still in their shiny silver state.

Yesterday, Dave headed over to the paint factory, where the colourful part happens!

Here, he was making sure that everything is prepared for painting (which starts next week!).

Dave will head back to the paint factory then to capture Maya Blue, Blaze Orange or Marengo Grey FLIT-16 parts emerge.

And finally… assembly!

After three years spent developing the FLIT-16, it’s going to be a special moment seeing our first full fleet assembled into finished bikes.

We’re very excited to take you behind the scenes as it happens!

Make sure you keep an eye out for our next update (you can subscribe below), where we’ll be sharing footage of our first batch of FLIT-16s being assembled and loaded onto the ship to the UK.

Don’t miss out!

As we get closer to delivery in a few weeks’ time the number of bikes that we have left from our first batch is rapidly decreasing.

We don’t want you to miss out. 

If you have any questions about our latest update, please feel free to get in touch!

You can also check us out on FacebookTwitter or Instagram for more.

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