Movement Engineering, higher recognized for his or her wild-looking E18 180mm journey leaf-sprung fork, are working away on a really light-weight 120mm journey leading-linkage fork that depends upon a normal rear shock for damping. At Eurobike, the 3D printed prototype was fitted to a Kona Hei Hei CR. We acquired the small print on Movement’s this futuristic XC fork from Mechanical Engineer, Finan Levingston.
Movement Engineering’s 120mm Main-Linkage Fork
Movement’s 120mm XC fork, the 3D printed mannequin of which you see right here, is 1.5 years within the making. The venture stems from the corporate’s perception that cross-country mountain bike forks might be manner lighter, and far more easy, than the ever present telescopic forks we see available on the market, and on the race tracks, at the moment.
On this primary prototype, an air shock mounted nearly vertically behind that DT Swiss branded cowl, is pushed from beneath by a rocker. On the base of the fork, on the non-drive facet, you’ll see what seems to be to be two rockers. The highest one drives the shock, whereas the decrease rocker serves to forestall braking forces from forcing compression or extension of the shock.
Certainly, this design goals to beat this disadvantage of a standard telescoping design whereby entrance wheel braking can pressure the fork into compression, one thing that’s sometimes called fork dive. With the brake caliper mounted to the decrease rocker, or torque arm, these forces are remoted from the suspension’s motion, such that it neither tends to dive, or rise, when the rider grabs the entrance brake.
That issues on the path, as a result of if braking is robbing you of early-stroke journey, there may be much less stroke accessible to soak up precise bumps you may encounter. And, whenever you do hit a bump whereas braking, the fork has moved deeper into its journey the place extra pressure is required for compression. If the Movement XC fork can keep excessive in its journey below braking, then it stands to cause that it’ll preserve extra of its small bump sensitivity with extra journey in reserve.
And, this one’s a half-crown design. This goes a protracted approach to bringing down the fork’s general weight. This was one among Movement’s high priorities; they needed to make an XC fork that’s lighter than the Rockshox SID Final, which is presently one among the (however not the) lightest 120mm journey mountain bike forks cash can purchase. That weighs round 1,300 grams, whereas Movement Engineering’s equal leading-linkage design weighs a claimed 1,200 grams – we’re ready to listen to again on which shock that makes use of.
The fork leg, if you’ll, shall be a monocoque carbon design, with a carbon steerer tube molded as a part of the identical construction.
Movement Engineering’s goal is to work carefully with manufacturers to develop a fork as a part of their frames. Certainly, the plan is for this 120mm journey providing to be an OEM part solely, and thus not accessible aftermarket. Movement will supply manufacturers the chance to tune the fork’s linkage to their wants, giving them extra management over how the body works at the side of the habits of the entrance finish of the bike.
Mechanical Engineer, Finan Levingston, tells us that the Movement fork will exhibit a lot much less friction than a contemporary telescoping fork, thus conferring improved small bump sensitivity. And naturally, compression of the shock is managed by way of a linkage, so tuneable development might be engineered into the linkage, simply as manufacturers do for a body linkage.
The 3D printed fork on show at Eurobike is one among Movement’s extra primary designs, however a poster on the wall at their sales space depicts a lot of potential iterations of the leading-linkage design.
We’ll be in contact with the parents at Movement Engineering to maintain you guys up to date on developments as and once they come. Finan was very imprecise about it, however did point out the potential of bikes rolling out of shops with a design similar to this one as early as Might 2024.
What about Movement Engineering’s World Cup Racing Ambitions?
Finan was cautious to not point out any model names right here, however he did say that we will stay up for seeing Movement’s 120mm journey leading-linkage fork on World Cup XC Race Bikes in 2025.
