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Company visit to Pinion
140 pieces is not really a lot when it comes to a puzzle. 140 pieces is beginner level, like cat picture puzzles for five-year-olds. But what Dragica Vlajic is working with here are not curvy pieces of cardboard, but 140 angular metal parts: Gear wheels, drive shafts, snap rings, ball bearings, pawls, tiny little springs and more gear wheels. And Vlajic stacks and sticks and clamps these little particles together so quickly that the eye can barely follow her fingers. So once again: axles, cogwheels, springs and, and, and... And finally a few drops of oil. Put the lid on and you're done.
Only half a dozen employees are currently working on gearbox assembly at Pinion. Corona has struck, and it's the school holidays at the moment anyway. But if the people at Pinion could assemble and deliver as quickly as the bike market would like, 1,000 gearboxes would have to leave the nested industrial building in Denkendorf every day for destinations all over the world: It can currently take six months for an ordered gearbox to arrive at a bike manufacturer. But this is more due to the spatial limits of growth. Only recently, the entire Baden-Württemberg company moved to a neighbouring building with more free space and charmingly polished remnants of old industrial culture: natural stone slabs, tiles and mullioned windows are definitely older than the new owners. The third floor is currently being extended. It's underway at Pinion.
Pinion manual gearbox: Confidence with 18 gears
When the two company founders Christoph Lermen and Michael Schmitz presented their baby at Eurobike in 2010, all they knew was that their gearbox worked technically. Lermen and Schmitz are gearbox professionals. The two hobby bikers met in the development department at Porsche, and their bicycle gearbox is similar in its basic structure to a mechanical manual gearbox found in millions of cars. Only with 18 gears instead of five or six. And much smaller. And with
a clientele that develops its propulsion not from premium petrol, but from sensitive muscles. A clientele for whom the gearbox is not just some unavoidable car part, but a key purchase criterion. There's no question about it: to provide a completely independent alternative to the basic decision of "Shimano or Sram gears" required self-confidence - especially as Pinion's customer, the bike manufacturer, has to develop a special frame for this that is compatible with nothing other than a Pinion gearbox.
Apart from their own ingenuity, two developments in bicycle technology played into the hands of the two founders: the practically maintenance-free Gates belt drive complements the gearbox to create a carefree package. Every 10,000 kilometres, the Pinion box requires 60
cubic centimetres of fresh oil, that's all. The Gates belt needs none at all. The combination sets this drive variant even more clearly apart from the more maintenance-intensive derailleur gears than the gearbox alone would have done. The majority of Pinion drivetrains are supplied with a belt pulley instead of a cogwheel.
The second, rather unexpected sales booster is the e-bike. Although Pinion gearboxes are located exactly where the mid-motor is usually bolted on, the gearbox is interesting for heavy-duty road and touring pedelecs. In combination with
In combination with a rear wheel motor, only the rider's pedalling power reaches the gears, whereas with the usual combination of mid-mounted motors with derailleur or hub gears, the gear components receive the motor power. This is wear-intensive. Around half of the gearboxes are used in e-bikes and the extra-powerful S-pedelecs.
Sporty mountain bikes with muscle drive make up only about a tenth of the total. The twelve-speed gearbox dominates here. Pinion supplies these compact gearboxes primarily to small forges such as Portus and Quantor, Nicolai and Instinctive, to Zerode from New Zealand - and to Alutech, where the frame of our Project Europe bike originates.
Which brings us back to the topic: Europe, supply chains and globalisation. At the Pinion headquarters near Stuttgart, the majority of the 60 or so employees are busy developing, improving, checking, purchasing and managing parts. There is not much to see on the upper floors - at least for visitors: there are offices that look like offices. And then there are the doors, behind which everything is secret or visitors would be disturbed. The actual gearbox construction is concentrated manual labour. Everything is supplied from outside, with just a few fitters combining the many parts into ready-to-ship gearboxes that go directly from here to the bike companies.
directly to the bike companies.
Pinion and the BIKE Project Europe: That's a 100% match
Nevertheless, Pinion gearboxes are as European as it gets. A good 90 per cent of them are made in Europe, and over two thirds of the value creation takes place in Germany. If not in-house, then sometimes almost round the corner. And, as co-founder and co-owner Christoph Lermen emphasises, this is a very sensible decision. "Some parts, such as gear wheels, come from the Black Forest. Some manufacturers are successors to the companies that once made watches. Gearwheels in particular often involve tiny details, and these people know their stuff. In the beginning, cooperating with regional manufacturers also helped us to improve the product. We looked at it together instead of sending things or people around the world."
Pinion now holds over 70 patents in the field of drive technology. But even without this protection, the manufacturer fears little competition: the product is very complex in detail, and the German suppliers are not only technically competitive, but also competitive in terms of price. Christoph Lermen: "These are companies that also work for the automotive industry. There is a high degree of automation. And whether this machine is located here or in another country makes little difference to the costs." Apart from that
Apart from that, this collaboration has developed from pragmatism to conviction: It is simply a good, productive collaboration - also because communication, understanding of quality and design culture fit together.
What happens in the 12-speed gearbox
The gears directly involved in the transmission rotate around two shafts. The lower seven gears are located on the bottom bracket shaft, the upper seven on a hollow shaft to which the shift cable engages from the outside.
Gear group 1 sits immovably on the bottom bracket shaft. These four gears (the 18-speed Pinion would have six) rotate precisely with the cadence.
Gear group 2 The opposing gear wheels in group 2 rotate continuously. They run in an oil bath on a hollow shaft. This hollow shaft has small windows under each of the upper gearwheels. When changing gear, a pawl folds up under one of them. This is how it engages. This cogwheel now transmits the power from the pedal crank to the upper shaft. The locked gear wheel turns the upper shaft at the speed resulting from the respective transmission ratio of the lower and upper gear wheels. We have coloured them for better understanding.
Gear group 3 are the three cogwheels to the right. They do roughly what three chainrings used to do: The respective combination of one of the four cogwheels on the left and one of them multiplies the number of gears. They rotate with the same hollow shaft, and here too a pawl (activated by the shift cable) determines which of the three picks up the speed. The coloured gear wheel on the right would be the "small leaf", so to speak.
Gear group 4 also sits on the bottom bracket shaft, but rotates freely on needle bearings independently of group 1. The small cogwheel from group 3 now rotates the large cogwheel from group 4. This rigidly connected group of three protrudes from the housing behind the right-hand crank (not visible in the photo above). The chainring sits on this protruding part - which rotates independently of the crank at the speed specified by the gearbox.
The Pinion gearbox: briefly explained
The Pinion gearbox has been in series production for over ten years. Most of the suppliers also work for car companies - a market that is extremely well served in Germany. 95 per cent of the gearbox is European.
1 The gearbox
Pinion's 12-speed gearbox covers a wider gear ratio range than the current twelve-speed derailleur gears and is virtually maintenance-free. The manufacturer claims a constant efficiency of 96.5 per cent, a tiny bit lower than a well-oiled derailleur system without major skewing. A Pinion bike is about a kilo heavier than one with high-end derailleur gears. This is also due to the special mount that makes a frame Pinion-compatible.
Spread: 600 per cent
Gears: 12 gears
Weight: 2.1 kilos (without cranks)
Price: 1000 Euro
2 gear wheels + bearing
The drive gears as well as the bottom bracket and shifting shaft are Made in Germany from Swabia. Because Pinion does not publish the names of its suppliers in detail, it is not possible to clarify the origin of the respective alloy. In addition, many alloys can be sourced worldwide, meaning that the manufacturer can quickly change suppliers. Germany is generally an important supplier country for special steels. The various ball and needle bearings in Pinion gearboxes come from Germany. One tiny exception: some of the pawls come from Switzerland.
3 housings + cranks
The gearbox of our Europa bike comes from the lighter, cheaper C-series from Pinion. The housings are made from die-cast magnesium - by a supplier from Rhineland-Palatinate. This supplier also does not disclose the origin of its alloys. The forged and over-milled cranks from Taiwan are the largest Asian import in the system. In the past, Pinion has endeavoured to find additional manufacturing companies in order to avoid supply bottlenecks. Some of the cranks now come from Portugal.
4 Oil + plastic
Yes, the petrochemical industry... Whether the crude oil for the gearbox comes from Russia, Iran or Saudi Arabia, of all places, cannot be determined. However, the added value, i.e. the conversion into gear oil, takes place in France. If it were petrol, the 60 cubic centimetres would barely get you one kilometre by car. The gearbox seals are highly specialised plastic parts, and the seals between the rotating shafts and the outside are particularly delicate. The seals come from a Swedish company that still manufactures in China. They are soon to be manufactured in Germany.
Pinion compact: brief history
History: In 2006, founders Michael Schmitz and Christoph Lermen met at the car manufacturer Porsche. In 2007, they applied for the first patent for their bike gearbox. The first bike brands exhibited Pinion models at Eurobike 2011. The company is owned by the founders and a private investor.
Production: All assembly takes place in Denkendorf near Stuttgart, as well as development, sales and administration. Around 60 employees work here. The suppliers of the individual parts mainly produce in Germany, often in the region.
Model range: Pinion only builds manual transmissions with 6, 9, 12 and 18 gears. The more expensive P-series comes with milled housings and 12 or 18 gears. In the C-series (6-, 9- and 12-speed), the housings are made of die-cast magnesium. This includes a twist grip and in-house aluminium cranks.
