Notes from a bicycle assembly shop in Taiwan

Last October I visited Universal Speed, the assembly shop that Brilliant Bicycles are built by. A few notes:

• The dedicated tooling to do frame prep operations (bearing pressing, etc) was *cool.* Most of it was made by Shuz Tung, a Taiwanese company.
• The wheelbuilding line was the single biggest part of the operation. The truing machine especially was impressive (videos below).
• They build everything upside down! I can't imagine doing this, but the advantages re: not touching the paint are really big.
• It was a really big facility - tens of thousands of square feet. 
• The moving assembly line was fun.

Adam, Kane & Jacob check out a stack of Brilliant's wheels.

Darn, I forget what this machine does. It's made by Shuz Tung.

Fork crown race & star nut assembly.

Fork crown race & star nut assembly.

I believe this presses an American BB.

Headset pressing.

Nice knife :)

Miscellaneous tools.

An early prototype of our bike. 

An early prototype of our bike; detail.

Pretty much everything here was worked on upside down, supported on the seat tube.

The outside of the shop. There was a wind power installation nearby.

Hercules.

Allan, Universal Speed's founder, used to work as a product manager for Specialized. This is the first P1 ever built - a classic mountain bike.

Me, explaining bike geometry.

Here are the wheels being built:

And here's the wheel truing machine in more detail:

Here's the whole shop (ish):