Brompton Folding Bicycles Factory Tour Part 2

As a manufacturer pumping out bikes that number in the thousands per year, Brompton has an impressive mechanized workforce on the factory floor aside from the human hands doing so much of the work as shown in Part 1 of the factory tour. Brompton creates the bikes essentially from the ground up, besides some forging and paint work the main assembly is completely constructed at their London, England facility. Such production requires mechanization of processes not just for efficiencies sake, but for things impossible by hand such as the precise finishing of hinges or rolling the end of a tube into a perfect tapered fit.

One of the more impressive devices to me was the auto-brazing machine, shown half way through the brazing stage of the cycle attaching a hinge-plate to the end of the seat tube. The hinge-plate and tube assembly is loaded in groups of two on a wheel inside the auto-brazer, proceeding through brazing torches and then a liquid quench before being set aside. The torches are intense and exacting, heating the assembly to the perfect temperature for the braze to flow, forming a long lasting joint ready for thousands of folds.

The US-made CNC machine used to finish the cast hinge-plates was equally as impressive, machining each side of the plate on both the x- and y-axis at once without changing bits. This saves time during production, but more importantly ensures that the face of the hinge shown being brazed above is perfectly aligned with the axis of the fold. Loaded four at a time, this machine literally does the work Brompton hinges on.

The factory operates on very little waste, this was the only bin I noticed during my entire walk through. Keeping waste to a minimum not only goes with the Brompton cycling mindset but is just good business sense. The factory was open and well lit, not chock full of chemical odors or even ridiculous noise levels. An impressive manufacturing operation that seamlessly blends into the final assembly work for each customer. Part 3 will be the final installment of the tour, covering the custom bike bits and final assembly of each customer-spec’d Brompton