These are the words of a lateral thinker: "If you laugh at an idea, you should start thinking about it more carefully," says Leo Kokkonen. He also says things like: "Imagination is the limiting factor for the things we do."
The Finn likes to go his own way. In search of an alternative to carbon frame construction, he talked shop with a CNC expert a few years ago. He joked that he should simply mill the entire main frame out of an aluminium block. They both laughed. It took a while for Kokkonen to start thinking about it in more detail. "Why not, actually? Most people only think along conventional lines. But the job of an engineer is to create something new and deviate from the norm." Kokkonen is a test rider, developer and also the boss and founder of the Finnish brand Pole Bicycles. His current baby, the Machine, is the result of CNC jokes.
- 37 screws press the individual parts of the frame together, with a wafer-thin layer of adhesive doing the holding work.
- 7 parts come out of the CNC milling machine and form the finished frame.
- 90 per cent of the raw aluminium block is produced as milling waste, parts of which are used to manufacture deflection levers and the rest is recycled.
Curious? Find out how the Pole Machine fared in the riding test and in the BIKE test lab in the test report in the PDF download area below.
You can find the complete test including all data in BIKE 1/2019. You can read the entire digital edition in the BIKE app (iTunes and Google Play) or the print edition in the DK shop reorder - while stocks last:
Downloads:
Florentin Vesenbeckh
Editor CvD
