Holding new products, components and parts in your hands and being able to try them out is always exciting for everyone. At BIKE, we occasionally have the opportunity to take a look behind the scenes of the bicycle industry, see the manufacturing process live and get to know the people behind a brand. Sometimes you hear stories from the early days of a company, sometimes you only realise how complex a finished product actually is to manufacture when you take a closer look.
Our editor Marc Strucken has now visited the Swabian metal construction experts H+B Hightech in Adelmannsfelden on the Ostalb. This company is well-known in the automotive industry, primarily as a supplier, but above all as the 100-year-old parent company of the H+B Group with around 600 employees. The 3X3 brand with its gear hubs was founded on the basis of an idea - or perhaps a possibility. We have already tested a Vello folding bike with such a hub.
3X3 - the name stands for the 9 gears of the hub, which are mechanically divided into 3 x 3 sections. The relative newcomer is therefore competing with its highly technical planetary drive product against the giant Shimano with Alfine and Nexus, against the deluxe supplier Rohloff and against the Dutch company Enviolo - and secondly against Pinions MGU.
So we wanted to see what a medium-sized German company does when it launches a gear hub on the market. 3X3 has practically only been around since 2022, when the two managing directors approached the first bike manufacturers and presented their idea.
3X3 gear hub: From a tinkerer's idea to a component on a cargo bike
There was a pretty smart inventor 3X3 years ago. Together with Kalle Nicolaithe founder of the MTB brand of the same name, worked on a concept for a hub gear, explains Patrick Steinwand, Head of Sales at 3X3. "We have taken this concept, developed it further and made it ready for series production."
Because there was still a lot to do. Not least because it doesn't just need the perfect product, but also sales, marketing, three developers, a project buyer, mechanics... "In other words, we really have set up a business unit at H+B Hightech GmbH that does completely different things than we did before," says sales man Patrick.
And now, it seems, the thing is picking up speed, with more and more bicycle manufacturers including the gear hub in their portfolio, for example Vello from Vienna, but also various (cargo bike) manufacturers such as Muli Cycles and Yoonite or Cooper. In addition, a dealer and service network is being built up, initially in Germany and, from this year, increasingly in France and the Benelux countries.
Material expertise from the Ländle
The two driving forces behind 3X3 are the managing directors Hilmar Wanner and Robert Heine. Heine - his name and family history are behind the H of H+B Hightech - is one of the board members of the Heine+Beisswenger Foundation and great-grandson of the founder, who started out with a camshaft bushing that is still produced in large series.
Hilmar Wanner has a background in production, which he learnt from the ground up. Back then, he had the gear hub project and a fleet of machines as well as the expertise from automotive production to machine the corresponding parts. Wanner was able to transfer this to the production of the hubs in Adelmannsfelden. Even now, he quickly reprogrammes the CNC milling machines himself if something seems inefficient: "He's Papa 3X3" - that's how his sales manager, Patrick, describes it.
Produce quickly & with the highest quality
They see this maker quality, this hands-on mentality that prevails at 3X3, as their great strength. The gear hub consists of around 100 parts. Around 60 of these come entirely from the company's own factory, are cut from a piece of raw steel or aluminium, milled, anodised and assembled.
The remaining 40 components are also largely sourced locally. Only in exceptional cases, such as the housing, are components sourced from other EU countries. The gear hub is assembled completely in-house.
This gives 3X3 a high degree of flexibility. Prototypes are designed, milled and tested immediately. Delivery can also be realised not just from 10,000 units, but practically from the first product ordered.
The company was able to purchase a building and a hall right next to its headquarters, where the 3X3 unit is now housed. The parts for the hub are produced in the production hall where the car parts are also turned - around 100 metres across the field.
Prototypes from the 3D printer
The large production hall contains an incredible number of so-called vertical lathes, all of which can carry out tens of work steps in succession without the workpiece - such as the drive shaft of the 3X3 gear hub - having to leave the machine itself and be transported onwards.
And then there's this one room that looks like a kitchen that hasn't been fully equipped yet, but a very large microwave has already been placed in the room. The machine is the "3D printer", whereby no small plastic parts are plopped out, but the laser creates metal parts from powder - called SLM (selective laser melting).
Patrick is still visibly enthusiastic because "it's just cool when you produce the parts yourself in-house. You can simply shout to your colleague and say: Hey, make a radius 3 instead of a radius 2, so the distances are much shorter." All of this in the charming Swabian dialect, of course, and with a real passion for what is produced here. That quickly becomes clear.
Whether from the "laser kitchen" or as a regular component, these are then further processed in the factory. A lot of robotics takes over the tedious task of moving workpieces back and forth. The CNC milling machine with its 12 milling heads is almost as impressive as the laser.
Unlike years ago, the component no longer changes from device to device, but the milling machine has a rotating disc on which the different milling heads sit. The component remains clamped there, the milling machine exchanges the tools and completes the different work steps automatically one after the other.
So how do you build a gear hub?
Admittedly, I had imagined that I would learn a little, or at least understand a little better, how such a hub gear is built. Naive, of course, but even with a certain basic technical understanding, I look at the partially open planetary gear in front of me like the Allies look at the Enigma cipher machine.
Even salesman Patrick can't and probably shouldn't show and explain more in equal measure. What is certain is that a great deal of engineering skill is built into a very small space, where micrometre precision is essential. A hair in this size range is as thick as a tree trunk.
However, it is precisely this precision and craftsmanship that gives the 3X3 hub advantages over other gearboxes. Firstly, the 3X3 can handle an input force of 250 Newton metres - current e-bike motors have a maximum torque of around 80 to 90 Nm.
This means that the Swabian drive can easily cope with use in very heavy cargo bikes. The efficiency of the company's own hub is also higher than that of the competition, explains Patrick, standing in front of his own test bench. Here, in their own test laboratory, the hubs or prototypes are subjected to endurance testing.
"We went to Dekra in September. We sent two virtually identical bikes there. One bike was fitted with a standard continuously variable hub gear and the other with our geared hub. And then we did a range height test. That was just 18 per cent more."
In this case: instead of climbing up to 1600 metres in altitude, the bike reached 1900 metres in altitude with 3X3. 300 metres more altitude with the same battery etc., that can make the difference between riding home with an empty battery - or not. This is due to the lower friction in the system - and the micrometre-precise Swabian thoroughness.
And this is monitored by another test stand: the Zeiss Prismo, the size of a small car - a coordinate measuring machine whose needle-head-sized measuring head detects even the tiniest deviations of the manufactured components from the specified shape.
Occupying a market niche between Rohloff and Enviolo
According to Patrick Steinwand, the 3X3 gear hub is around 100 to 200 grams heavier than the Rohloff product from near Kassel, and it is around 400 grams lighter than the inexpensive Enviolo from the Netherlands. The Swabians from 3X3 see themselves right in between, in the market niche between the two European competitors.
Both in terms of performance and the price, which is often rated higher by consumers. Sales Manager Patrick explains it like this: "From the bike manufacturer's point of view, many people take the supposedly inferior product because they are not prepared to pay X euros more for the Rohloff. You have to be a fan to do that."
3X3 hub only via specialised dealers
The Adelmannsfelden-based company also wants to do a lot better when it comes to servicing. Due to its design, the 3X3 gearbox can be completely removed from the housing and either repaired or replaced. The wheel does not have to be laboriously removed and replaced because the housing remains untouched.
Patrick explains: "Especially for families who value sustainability, the bike is part of everyday life. And if it doesn't work, you have to be able to service it relatively quickly and get it back on the road." And that's why a service dealer can keep one or two gearboxes plus peripherals in stock, which doesn't take up much space.
On the other hand, 3X3 does not want end users to take on maintenance, retrofitting or repairs. Only trained dealers can ensure that the quality is right and that customers are and remain truly satisfied.
Marc Strucken
Editor
