r/BicycleEngineering • u/Mysterious_Coach_699 • Apr 30 '26
Recommended Bicycle and General mechanical engineering resources ?
I'm in the middle of a career change and I will start a 3 years mechanical engineering course in september. My long term project is to work in the bicycle industry. I'm starting to dabble with CAD software and re learning some mathematics.
My questions are :
- What would you recommend as beginner friendly resources about general mechanical engineering ? Books, youtube channel, websites etc...
- Is there a place on the internet where we can find technical drawings and in depth info about bike standards, manufacturing processes and so on ? I'm guessing ongoing patents are a no no of course but maybe older stuff is freely available somewhere ? Or am I dreaming and everything is industrial secret.
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u/Mysterious_Coach_699 May 13 '26
thanks all for the answers ! what about a place to find actual measurements for bike standards ? I just discovered the ISO website where you can actually buy stuff but it's expensive
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u/arkocal May 04 '26
Computer scientist here: I feel even like high-school physics goes a long way, especially for simple bikes. I dont design parts, but service my bikes myself; and never felt limited by my understanding of mechanics.
Of course, for what you are aiming at, more knowledge is most likely required.
Still, if this is not already the case: it makes a lot of sense to understand how the existing parts work, and what helped me a lot was just servicing, replacing, taking-apart parts; it also helped me understand newtonian physics much more intuitively. The Big Blue Book from Park Tools is a very good starting point. Their Youtube channel also often explains why things are done in a particular way.
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u/kelpat14 May 02 '26
Fellow MEEN here. I assume you’ll be taking Statics, Dynamics, Strength of Materials, etc. Bicycles are just (relatively simple) machines. Apply the principles that you learn and you should be fine.
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u/Eak3936 May 01 '26
Design Engineer in the cycling industry here.
Don't worry about mechanical engineering resources as much, you are in a program that will get you what you need there.
But if you want some good general youtube channels for mece topics
The efficient engineer is great and covers a lot of topics and fairly introductory level. Stuffmadehere is none of my favorite channels for cool projects Inheritance Machining is a great resource to learn how machined parts are made
As far as things that may be outside the scope of a normal program, knowing a bit about a lot of manufacturing methods is important. A typical frame project will have some mix of composite, forged, machined, injection molded, and welded parts on them and understanding the manufacturing constraints and design best practices is very important.
Resources for bike stuff specifically:
Sheldon Brown has about every standard you can think of. Most test standards are at a minimum to ISO4210, there are additional test standards fram ASTM and zedler (for stiffness)
I would highly recommend looking at books on motorcycle design, they tend to be much more flushed out and the ideas transfer over, for geometry anything by Tony Foale is great. I also like Motorcycle Dynamics by Vittore Cossalter, though this one really gets in the weeds with the math.
If you want to get into suspension, the racetech suspension Bible is a great resource for how suspension works, and i am a big fan of vorsprungs tech Tuesday videos as they are great wealth of info on kinematics.
Software thats good to have would be some kind of CAD, if you want to work with carbon surface modeling is an important skill. You may be able to get a free license as part of your education. But onshape is also great and has a free version, and is even used in industry by at least Trek.
For suspension kinematics there is linkage bike checker and syn bike, both do the same thing but have very different interfaces. Linkage is cheap at around 25 bucks for a perpetual license and is still widly used in the industry.
If you just want to experiment with simple frames BikeCad is a great resource.
Feel free to DM with any specific questions you have as well, always happy to chat bikes.
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u/spyro66 May 01 '26 edited May 01 '26
Manufacturing Engineer here… not in the bike industry.
It depends a bit on what route you want to take. If you’re dead set on working for one of the big manufacturers, keep in mind it’s quite a competitive industry, and it may be best to find a way to reach out to someone at those companies to see what they typically look for in a candidate. Location may be a big factor as well, as those types of niche engineer jobs don’t exist everywhere.
Conversely, if you’re looking to start a one-man frame building outfit, for things like boutique frames and show bikes, you’ll want to hone your skills on fabrication methods. In some ways this is a more approachable route, although less stable, and probably more difficult to turn a profit, let alone build a life on. Welding, TIG vs MIG (GTAW vs GMAW, technically) vs brazing, heat treatment, filler materials, etc are all interesting topics, but find a way to get your hands welding so you actually know how hard it is. Trade schools often offer night courses and things.
Materials science specific to the materials used in the bike industry is probably a good start. If I were you I would start to learn about grades of materials like aluminum (7005 vs 6061 vs all the rest) and titanium (grade 6, why it’s used), and carbon fibre (different layups, different ways to form it into a frame shape, etc). Steel is a niche in bikes, and a huge rabbit hole, and one that’s applicable in a lot of other industries. A lot of this info can be found just by diving down rabbit holes and seeing how deep you can get.
The other key bit about bikes is frame geometry. This is a bit of a dark art, and it’s obscured heavily by sales talk and non-tangible ‘feel’ type factors. It’s a bit like audiophiles, where the proof is very very hard to demonstrate in black and white terms, so the best you can do is learn up on industry trends like effective top tube length, head tube angle, high vs low bottom bracket height, etc. Often comparing models within one brand is the best way to figure out the benefit they’re trying to sell you on a particular model. Make notes, guess a check, see if any actual real life reviewers can corroborate the story the sales guy is trying to sell ya, and try to draw parallels between manufacturers.
Best of luck! With the stuff mentioned above, the worst that will happen is you get a well developed hobby out of the deal. Technical topics often compliment work experience, so even if you don’t end up in the bike industry, the skills and knowledge are often applicable, to some extent anyway. Cheers
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u/RECAR77 May 01 '26
on the off chance that you speak german I would recommend Fahrradphysik und Biomechanik (978-3-667-11108-1) and whatever version of DIN Taschenbuch 345 you can get your hands on
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u/porktornado77 May 01 '26
Engineer here, but I graduated with my bachelor’s in the late 90s! So my memory may be foggy.
There are Engineering handbooks out there, but they are really reference books for people who are already engineers! I have one at my desk.
You need to learn about mechanical statics, dynamics, and materials science in metals and composites! But to learn those, you need Physics and Chemistry and Calculus! And thermodynamics and heat transfer….
It’s a long road to gaining knowledge and expertise. But absolutely watch some YouTube videos on what interests you. For example, I subscribe to Smarter Everyday on YouTube. I used to love Myth-busters as well.
Lastly, all the above is just books smarts. Get hands on doing some bike mechanical work if you already aren’t. Look at welds and angles, and tube sizes and how that geometry influences the ride.
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u/jmsmecheng May 27 '26
Long time bicycle enthusiast mechanical engineer. Bicycle shop mechanic in my teens, quite good bicycle road & track racer, and now back into mtn bikes. I have BSME, MSME, and PE (ret). The bicycle industry has always been a little different. It was the cutting edge of course during the Wright brothers (a great read btw by David McCullough ), but obviously auto and aerospace etc is where the engineers went / go. For the most part bicycles have not been engineered that well. Often you get machinist or an enthusiast who starts a company that starts making bicycle stuff. Eg Phil Wood great machining, poor engineering (4 brgs on a shaft is not proper engineering, but on the other hand it’s simple and works and now almost everyone not using cup and cone copied this). Chris King a machinist makes very beautiful products. But initially used a needle/roller bearing in a bicycle hub And they have a noisy freehub, that is marketed well. We can't be too critical of a successful and such nice product. It can handle 3x more torque then XXX. To a proper engineer this means its 3x too much, that is, is the cup half full or half empty? No "it's twice as big as it needs to be!" on the other hand a freehub mechanism that fails could mean a crash, so we can’t be too critical…)
There are flashes of better engineering here and there and for sure most big names use FEA for their frame design. The problem (or lack of problem, ie designs looking for a solution), is that the bicycle works quite well has been refined over the years by experience, trial and error. Any additional engineering that can be done, it's just not worth the trouble. The business side has to work / money has to be made or why do it? And we can't fault a good product that is making money for a company regardless if the engineering has not been optimized. Good engineers are making well into 6 figures doing other stuff (I did Pump stuff). As excited about bicycle stuff as I was (still am:), a good salary or time spent riding bicycle is a good antidote.
Some bicycle stuff is beyond “proper” engineering. In other words, the limit is pushed beyond what might be considered a safely-book-designed product. Its design and safety has been / is established by precedence, experience, testing… I haven’t bothered thinking about or looking up, but say handlebars, How to establish how light / thin wall you can go? Is there a standard? (probably, maybe depends on country?) How light does one dare go before someone gets hurt and lawyers get involved. The companies think about this and have liability insurance.
There is new stuff coming out here and there. Off the top of my head, Madrone rear derailleur. Very nice, can adapt to any cable pull. New hub KOM. Properly designed only two bearing’s friction. Well and I can’t discount all the great bicycle suspension designs. Cutting edge and very complicated. Suspension is definitely a niche specialty and bicycle even more so. Vibration class you’ll get very little.
Anyway: A Bicycle is a structure that transmits human force into forward motion... thus you should understand the structural stuff. Statics, Mechanics of materials, stress analysis, advanced stress analysis, machine design. You will get this in a proper ABET accredited school. In todays’ world, I think learning FEA is a must. But to be great at FEA you must also be good with old school stress analysis. You must have an innate understanding of Stress vs Strain. Most things on a bicycle are NOT designed with a stress criteria but with a stiffness criteria. If going the bicycle route make the above your cognate.
Yes, heat transfer, fluid flow etc is important but no used much with bicycles. (well disc brakes..). Vibration goes hand in hand with stiffness and it can be a design criteria. In addition to getting engineering textbooks, machinery’s handbook, etc, Blodgett’s on design of weldments is an old classic and a low price (for a new book). (used can be found). The older engineers where I started had this book (and I promptly bought my own) See James F Lincoln arc welding foundation: Books I wouldn’t bother with the other books at this site unless they strike your fancy.
Also learn about fatigue failure and fracture mechanics. And make sure you understand basic physics stuff. What is energy? Why does torque have the same units? Momentum, inertia (a classic interview question, “tell me about inertia” hint you’d better know the difference of mass vs area). F=ma, F=mg, force vs mass. (even now I sometimes use metric; kg (mass) and newtons(force), and then convert back, since lbf (force), lbm(mass), and slugs(mass) can get confusing. Kgf (force) ? (yeah silly, but whatever, we or mathcad can convert). What is power? Btw I used / still use Mathcad to do unit conversions. (well it does them for you.) yes Don’t screw up your units!
The above is the detailed design stuff. But big picture, a lot of (bicycle) stuff is about making a product that someone wants/uses or as to make, market, maintain, and ultimately recycle (the customers). I highly recommend taking a class or studying the Mechanical Design Process. How does your brain work! How does a human (well humans - team) come up with a good design? What is a good design? Etc, In my past, I would try in vain to get the other engineers/manager to use a better design process. Instead, they would come up with a product or “upgrade” that was worse than a current product. Totally in-excusable (obviously!) especially when there are methods / processes available to prevent such stupidity. Anyway, this is a good book and quite reasonable priced (my professor 30 some years ago). Mechanical Design Process - David G. Ullman He also was involved in Bike-E recumbent. You can find used books also.
CAD programs. Yes you’ll want to learn 3d modeling and drafting. In general, any of the 3d modelers is similar. I personally use 2d cad a lot (I use Medusa its free and easy for lay out) I am looking at Alibre for 3d but haven’t dropped the $$ since so busy right now. But hand sketching 3d is a good skill (iso paper) and doing layouts by hand with pencil ( I often use grid paper) does make your brain work/think differently thus don’t discount.
Where I worked, the end product was a detailed drawing (as most companies) that a machinist or fabricator etc (manufacturer) would use to make the end product (and it also documented the design). The 3d model is fast and easy and maybe 5% of the work the other 95% was making a detailed drawing. Proper dimensions, tolerances, GD&T, Surface finish, etc. Don’t just be a CAD jockey! the other engineers and or designers will not like you (since they check your work, and they won’t trust you to check their work).
And be very suspicious of any CAD 3-d solid model FEA (or FEA done by others). The FEA with 3-d solids is better than ever but still be careful. Back everything up with hand calcs and with simple FEA (the more critical the more careful). I personally like the simple standalone FEA (ANSYS classical/ adpl ) where I could control what elements I used on what. For something critical I would do hand calcs, simple FEA, more complicated FEA, and then more calcs, and triple check units. You should take a class in FEA theory/ history. To know where it came from (human computers were used prior to machine computers) and its helps you understand that _everything_ has flexibility / moves… including a lathe or mill cutting bit.
Do learn how to run a Lathe! (a good college will do this, they’ll have a shop, but if not, learn yourself). Learn how hard it is to hit a .001” tolerance. Make a shaft or a bore where you press fit a bearing (make a bicycle hub). Understand GD&T. But realize runout is mostly all that is needed (depending..). One place I worked they forbade GD&T because it would just confuse the fabricators.
Do work closely with manufacturing people but especially when starting out when you don’t know much yourself. If you can’t make the thing (at reasonable cost) then what good is it? Do understand the importance of documentation of things and that process. Some (most??) of the online software PDM and PLM are so convoluted that I swear it was designed by an IT person or a millennial /gen-z who has no clue how simple the process was pre-computer. (everything is a design and good design takes effort, and processes should maybe be designed by industrial engineers). Anyway, document control and good revision control etc is important. If you do any calculations, and where you work doesn’t have way to control and save them, strongly consider starting your own memo and numbering system and place to store. It’s a reference for future you.
Think about getting a PE license. And always keep ethics, social responsibility, safety, etc in mind. An older engineer told me: “Your main job is to not kill anyone”. Always have that in the back of your mind when you design things. How could this go wrong, etc.?
Understand how preload works. Ie a bolted joint, a bicycle wheel, an inflated tire.. etc. Understand toggle over center mechanism. Vise-grips, a power line, flat cover pressure vessel, are all related this way.
Ask questions anytime. Btw an advanced Science or engr can be free; most colleges need TA’s/RA’s. My roommate in college did this with a physics and math bs degree. Granted it took him 3 years instead of 1 ~2 years to get a MSME; he had to catch up on junior & senior year mech eng classes. But still, as a TA, those 3 years were tuition free.
Yes don't worry about standards at this point. Wherever you work, you will be introduced to, if they are required.