Big things are happening in the sleepy Lancashire town of Barnoldswick, where Hope Technology have been busy working on some major new projects
An institution of British manufacturing, Hope are known and loved throughout the mountain biking world for their beautifully machined disc brakes, hubs and a plethora of other homegrown products. For 2015, they'll be bringing out something completely new — their first set of cranks. And with talk of carbon parts in the pipeline, we decided it was time to pay them a visit...
Hub of industry
Barnoldswick sits on the Yorkshire/Lancashire border, nestled among the Pennine Hills, with Manchester and Leeds an hour in either direction. This place has a quintessentially English charm and character — just like the businesses that call it home.
Negotiating the steep and narrow roads, it's hard to miss the industrial heritage all around. Manufacturing built this town and still plays a large part in everyday life here — Barnoldswick has the highest proportion of people working in industry anywhere in the UK. Bed brand Silent Night are based here and so is Rolls-Royce's jet engine business, which is where the Hope story starts. Co-founders Ian Weatherill and Simon Sharp are both former Rolls-Royce employees who left to follow a dream that would ultimately lead us here, to Hope's massive factory and HQ.
Pulling up outside the front door, we're greeted by a building that looks anything but a state-of-the-art factory, but the big, green, glowing sign outside tells us this is the right place. The building was formerly a printworks, and its previous owners spent a fortune renovating it — 450000$ on the huge foyer alone. With plasma TVs playing videos of Hope's racers, framed photos of riders and employees past and present, glass cabinets rich with brand memorabilia, and a history lesson in mountain bike design courtesy of a number of old race bikes on display, this place is a bike geek's dream come true.
The scale of Hope's operation becomes evident as we pass through various offices full of staff busy behind their prototype-strewn desks. Leaning up against the walls are seriously tricked-out Santa Cruz Nomads, V10s and Specialized Enduros, alongside road and cyclo-cross bikes of all shapes and sizes — all of them with custom Hope graphics and parts. This is no ordinary company, and their own version of the Government's Cycle to Work scheme is similarly next-level.
Bikes on the house
"The problem was that the staff in sales and design had access to all the best bikes through their industry contacts, but the guys on the shop floor were still riding around on their trusty old bikes," says Ian. "I wanted to make sure everyone had access to the best bikes, so several years ago I decided no one was going to be allowed to own a bike and instead we'd supply every member of staf with a bike — or several — fully kitted out in our parts, whether they were just riding to work or competing in races every weekend." There are now 250 bikes in Hope colours under their 116 staff, and with a net worth of close to 1500000$, you know that when these guys tell you they love bikes, they're not kidding.
Not only do Hope have one of, if not the, best staf bike schemes in the UK, they also have a pump track for their employees to ride in their lunch breaks. The original track was designed and built by team rider and FEST Series chief lunatic Nico Vink a few years ago, but the British elements and a factory full of riders left it badly in need of a facelift. It's been replaced with a new 60m track made from a blend of tarmac berms and special gravel, with the sides landscaped to make it look like it's grown out of the ground. With 17 berms, 18 main jumps and six big rollers, it offers riders of all abilities a variety of lines to pump and jump through. And with some dirt jumps and a wallride already planned, and even talk of a singletrack loop around the lot, there's far more to come.
Made in the UK
As we pass the huge staff room, complete with both snooker and pool tables, and enter the factory floor, the contrast with the outside world hits us — we've gone from quiet, rural surroundings to an ultra modern manufacturing facility filled with huge Japanese CNC machines, lathes and laser cutters and grinders, all busy making virtually everything in Hope's line-up. "We buy in rims, bearings, brake pads, brake hoses and all the seals, which accounts for only around five per cent of the parts used," says marketing manager Alan Weatherill. "The rest is all machined here from the 250,000kg of raw material we buy in each year."
Even the internals of Hope's lights are made locally. "The circuit boards are designed to our specification and assembled up the road, about 20 miles from the factory," says Alan. "And the plastic battery cases are moulded 10 miles away. We do import the bare lithium-ion batteries and connectors, but all the parts are soldered together and assembled right here in Barnoldswick."
All Hope products go through the most stringent of tests in-house too, with a number of rooms just of the factory floor packed with machines that can detect the most minute imperfection. The company's quality control team test every element of every product, ranging from appearance to toughness.
Cranking things up
It's an important year for Hope, and one that'll see a product that's been hotly anticipated finally hit the shops — their first crankset. As we wander around the factory, production of the new cranks is in full swing, with huge milling machines turning forged alloy blanks into beautifully CNC machined crank arms.
Hope tested three axle and arm designs over a seven-year period before settling on the final design, with its unique expanding-spline axle interface. Alan explains: "Cranks using splines often use a taper to ensure a snug fit. Once the arms have been taken off and on a few times, the spline becomes worn so they sufer from movement and annoying creaks. Our cranks are pulled on to a conventional spline, then we fit a tapered plug inside the axle that can be tightened every time the arm is refitted, giving a perfect fit every time." This system required the development of a proprietary tool for fitting the cranks, which also needed designing and testing. One comes in the box with each crankset.
The crank arms are CNC machined from forgings to give them, in Alan's words, "immense strength and stiffness". The production process is a wonder to behold, involving a symphony of huge milling machines that wouldn't look out of place in a Terminator film moving materials around in the most orderly fashion while filling the air with the strangely intoxicating smell of milled metal and cutting fluid.
Rise of the robots
The process starts with a custom made, cold forged, 7000 series aluminium blank. This is fed into one of the huge four-axis horizontal milling machines, which first machines the outside profile of the crank and then creates the thread for the pedal. The arms are then loaded on to a five-axis vertical milling machine, which finishes the splines, while also ensuring that the pedal thread is square to the axle. A machinist loads and unloads the machines, but they can run unmanned for many hours thanks to robots that are able to choose the tools needed for each action.
The finished crank arms are washed in ground walnut shells to remove any imperfections and loaded on to jigs by hand ready for anodising. The anodising process takes between 30 and 90 minutes depending on the colour — the deeper the finish, the longer it takes. The arms are then laser etched with the all-important Hope logo before being packed into boxes ready for dispatch around the world.
A new Hope
From the designers, engineers and machinists to the testers, team riders and everyone in between, there's an underlying vibe that ripples through Hope's fabric. "Hope are different!" says marketing manager and team rider Rachael Walker. "We're like a little family who all love riding bikes. Some prefer trail riding, some DH, XC, road or CX, and some prefer motorbikes. Whatever it is, it's a love of all things bikes and adventure that brings us all together and creates a common bond. We're not very corporate," she adds. "The boardroom is the least used room in the building. Most of the big decisions are made in the kitchen over a brew and toast."
With the cranks now ready, Hope are ready to sink their teeth into some new projects — one of which is suitably next-level. "We've bought a six-acre site 500m from our factory where we're building a 200m indoor velodrome track," says Alan. But it's what's being built underneath that really catches our attention... "On the second floor is the track, but below it will be a new R&D and carbon production facility."
Alan didn't want to give away any details, but did admit that handlebars would likely be Hope's first carbon product. Until now they've stuck exclusively with aluminium, so this new focus on composites, combined with their existing manufacturing skills, is sure to produce some exciting results.
"Products and projects happen because we want them to and we're passionate about them," concludes Rachael. We can't wait to see what Hope come up with next...
Team riders and talented staff
Hope choose their team riders carefully, looking for racers who can give specific feedback. As well as their own Hope Factory Racing downhill, enduro and XC teams, they also supply kit to the likes of Red Bull Rampage champ Andreu Lacondeguy. There are some pretty hot riders among the staff too. "We have Paul Oldham in R&D who won the National XC Series last year and has also been national CX champion," says Alan Weatherill. " Matt Rushden, one of our CNC machinists, races DH, coming second in Expert at a British Downhill Series race last year. Rachael Walker, who looks after marketing duties, raced DH at the highest level and has now moved over to enduro, finishing in top positions in her first races. And Woody Hole, who runs the assembly and dispatch departments, was no slouch in his day either, with top 20 finishes on the DH World Cup scene. He's just discovered enduro too."
Hope's magic machines
From a single CNC machine back in 1992, Hope now own 60 of these super-expensive tools. This enables them to continue production 24 hours a day. Their brake callipers and master cylinders are made using five-axis CNC machines, with three-axis machines used for sprockets and rotor centres, and lathes with driven tooling used for hubs, axles and spacers. Larger parts are made on huge Japanese machines, while some of the smaller parts are made on Swiss lathes that are also used in the watch industry. In 2013 Hope sold 25,000 wheels, 20,000 brake sets and 50,000 hubs. They anodise 100,000 components each week.
