http://www.pinkbike.com/news/Chris-Kings-vision-Products-2012.html
Chris King: The Turning Point
In the '70s, a sometime bike builder and machinist in Santa Barbara, California, named Chris King sought to find a better path. It was the era of flower power and free love. Mountain Bikes didnt yet exist. Road biking fandom was innocent of the drug-fueled scandals of today. And bicycle headsets pretty much sucked.
Chris grew up well entrenched in that hippy culture. California was full of hippies and tree hugger types. I was just one of those guys, stated Chris, as we discussed his formative years in becoming the industry icon that he is now.
Chris King: "You can find a middle ground in becoming more technologically advanced as a race and a species. You just need to figure out how to not destroy your world at the same time that you are advancing like that. I figured, well, I should be able to find some kind of middle ground I could pursue that, while having some elements that could be considered destroying things, would at the same time be considered as contributing to our advancement (as a race). And ultimately bicycles made a lot of sense: super efficient, and yes, it's technology, but its one of the smallest (environmental) footprints that you can imagine as efficient transportation."
At this time, Chris was working to pay the bills, welding up a few frames to feed his bicycle centric passion, and (of course) riding bikes. In his spare time, hed tinker with bits of bikes in the machine shop, and share those bits with his fellows at the pro bike shop in Santa Barbara. A then well established individual in that shop who was normally disinterested in Chris bits finally took aside this young Chris King and offered him a piece of what is now sage advice:
If you really wanted to make something cool, you'd make a better headset.
He then went on to explain what was wrong with current designs, and off Chris went.
We tested one of the early ones on a guy who raced in Europe all summer. He deliberately rode it loose almost the entire season, recalled Chris when I toured the Chris King facility this past February. When he got back, we tightened it up, and it was perfect. Mind you, this was in an era when guys who rode a lot would go through a headset a month. On the road, of coursemountain bikes didnt exist yet. We were all blown away.
A simple display at Chris King's desk marks the humble beginnings and the current place in bicycle history for Chris King: an original headset, a current headset, and a piece of the Camino Cielo roadway in Santa Barbara, the original home for Chris King, and the namesake for his line of bicylces. The black headset on this stand was used by Lance Armstrong in the Tour de France.
Baby Steps, Dumb Luck, and the Advent of the Mountain Bike
How did King do it? By his own admission, he stumbled into it. Chris worked in a medical tool manufacturing facility. Some of those surgical devices relied on bearing assemblies, and since they were designed for surgical procedures, they required absolute precision. However, the process of continually sanitizing the devices during surgical procedures would essentially kill the device by spoiling the grease in its moving parts, requiring it to be sent in for service. As luck would have it, the bearings cast off from the warranty service departments repairs were about the right size for a headset. And since the surgical sanitization procedure killed off the lubrication, but not the bearings, Chris had a ready supply of cast off surgical grade cartridge ball bearings to work his magic with.
Headset cups fresh from the Anodizer await assembly at Chris King's modern factory.
Consider that the bearing assemblies of the time used absolute crap for material. If it had been wine, itd have come in a leaky box that even your most down trodden winod pass on. Even the good stuff of the timethe then revered Campagnolo steel-race headset, while mechanically sound, was prone to failure within a season for the simple reason that the materials were not hardened enough to withstand the rigors that cycling placed on them. Now, all of the sudden, Chris was making a headset that was a vintage wine of the finest quality. Because his was made using surgical grade material that was hardened all the way through: crème de la crème. And then some. Once word of Chris incredibly durable headset trickled out, demandand a very limited productionfollowed.
And then along came the mountain bike. Many cyclists snubbed this upstart way of approaching two-wheeled transport, but a fair number of Chris customers were game to give it a go. But the cheap headsets of the era would literally last a day or so klunking on the local fire roads. It was only a matter of time before the riders in the know were pulling their King headsets from their road bikes to place in their new mountain bikes. And the legend began.
Manufacturing Should Not Destroy in Order to Create
Chris King went into business making headsets and doing contract machining in 1976. It wasnt overnight success, and King was forced to step away from his first love of building bike frames (since resurrected with the Cielo line of craft Road, CX and Mountain Bikes); but in time, he was able to focus on manufacturing only cycling components. The best cycling components he could - but with an ethic behind them.
Manufacturing isn't just about making the very best final product; it's about responsible management of the process through every step. - Credo espoused on the King website
In a nutshell, the Chris King credo turns industrial manufacturing on its head. It is manufacturing with a conscience, with an eye towards sustainability. Heavy industry is typically anything but that. It is creation that comes with a heavy dose of destruction. But King Components does its best to mitigate that destruction where and whenever possible during the manufacturing process and always with an eye towards a greater good.
At the end of the day, it's not only the human touch that defines Chris King's approach to manufacturing his components, but the responsibility for that manufacturing process. Every piece made creates waste metal and waste cutting fluid - in the image pictured here, steel shavings (called chips) and soy oil. King uses sustainably grown domestic soy oil exclusively as a cutting fluid and as lubrication for the machines in his factory. But this fluid coats each and every chip, making them difficult to recycle.
Doing this whole manufacturing thing I figured this kind of stuff goes on. You can either avoid doing it and be idealistic to that point, or you can say Im gonna find a better way to do that, mused King. Doing it with a conscience, right? Knowing that I worked well with my hands and knowing that I worked well with this kind of (sustainable) thinking I made that choice to pursue that [sustainable manufacturing]. I just looked at it with the thought that, this comes to me easily, so why not pursue it? But lets find a path through it that makes sense."
Recycling metal chips a simple economic necessity in an industry that "wastes" so much material in process of creation. But dirty chips are much, much harder to recycle. At King, all remnant chips are collected, placed into appropriately labeled bins (steel, ti, aluminum) and then subjected to the tender mercies of 400 tons of force from a hydraulic press that squeezes nearly all the remnant soy oil from the chips and forms them into the infamous King "pucks." The compressed biscuits allow the metals to be recycled as a higher grade than would loose chips.
This is the ethic that makes King products so unique. Yes, his components are manufactured with precision in mind: every part uses the best materials possible and they are touched by hand multiple times during the creation process, making for an insane level of quality and control. The key, though, is that every part is created with the concept of sustainability in mind: all waste manufacturing materials are recycled to a degree virtually unheard of in industrial manufacturing98% of his waste lubrication is reclaimed and re-used; waste water enters the sewer system nearly drinkable. Each step along the way allows for creation of an end product that, if properly maintained, will last the lifetime of a bike or more, thus creating an even smaller footprint than a similar but disposable component that needs to be replaced constantly.
Ethical, Expensive - and Economical?
Pure and simple, Kings approach to manufacturing costs money up front. But in the long run, it actually costs less, both to your wallet and to the environment. How? Do the math: on the one hand, you can purchase one headset that costs $130 or so retail and lasts 10 years or more if properly maintained. Usually more. Or you can purchase a $30 headset that lasts for a year or less. Yes thats $130 up front, but over the course of five years of $30 headsets, its a net savings financially as well as significantly less waste material entering the environment. Even if you dont really care about the environment, you cant argue with the economic savings of purchasing one component one time vs. multiple times.
King recovers 98% of the soy manufacturing oil, which is then filtered, clarified, and sent back out for re-use in King's CNC machines. It's not a perfect system, but darn near and it reduces King's environmental footprint considerably.
Sustainability. Quality. Precision. Conscience. This then, is Chris King. It is not only each and every component that bears the name Chris King, it is also each and every person putting time in at the former coffee roasting house that now houses Chris King Precision Components and Cielo Bicycles. And King's ethos extends to his employees as well. Over the course of 2011, King employees commuted to work 70% of the time by bicycle. And there's a readily available reason to ride in: riding miles for cafe credit and vacation days.
Chris King: The Turning Point
In the '70s, a sometime bike builder and machinist in Santa Barbara, California, named Chris King sought to find a better path. It was the era of flower power and free love. Mountain Bikes didnt yet exist. Road biking fandom was innocent of the drug-fueled scandals of today. And bicycle headsets pretty much sucked.
Chris grew up well entrenched in that hippy culture. California was full of hippies and tree hugger types. I was just one of those guys, stated Chris, as we discussed his formative years in becoming the industry icon that he is now.
Chris King: "You can find a middle ground in becoming more technologically advanced as a race and a species. You just need to figure out how to not destroy your world at the same time that you are advancing like that. I figured, well, I should be able to find some kind of middle ground I could pursue that, while having some elements that could be considered destroying things, would at the same time be considered as contributing to our advancement (as a race). And ultimately bicycles made a lot of sense: super efficient, and yes, it's technology, but its one of the smallest (environmental) footprints that you can imagine as efficient transportation."
At this time, Chris was working to pay the bills, welding up a few frames to feed his bicycle centric passion, and (of course) riding bikes. In his spare time, hed tinker with bits of bikes in the machine shop, and share those bits with his fellows at the pro bike shop in Santa Barbara. A then well established individual in that shop who was normally disinterested in Chris bits finally took aside this young Chris King and offered him a piece of what is now sage advice:
If you really wanted to make something cool, you'd make a better headset.
He then went on to explain what was wrong with current designs, and off Chris went.
We tested one of the early ones on a guy who raced in Europe all summer. He deliberately rode it loose almost the entire season, recalled Chris when I toured the Chris King facility this past February. When he got back, we tightened it up, and it was perfect. Mind you, this was in an era when guys who rode a lot would go through a headset a month. On the road, of coursemountain bikes didnt exist yet. We were all blown away.
A simple display at Chris King's desk marks the humble beginnings and the current place in bicycle history for Chris King: an original headset, a current headset, and a piece of the Camino Cielo roadway in Santa Barbara, the original home for Chris King, and the namesake for his line of bicylces. The black headset on this stand was used by Lance Armstrong in the Tour de France.
Baby Steps, Dumb Luck, and the Advent of the Mountain Bike
How did King do it? By his own admission, he stumbled into it. Chris worked in a medical tool manufacturing facility. Some of those surgical devices relied on bearing assemblies, and since they were designed for surgical procedures, they required absolute precision. However, the process of continually sanitizing the devices during surgical procedures would essentially kill the device by spoiling the grease in its moving parts, requiring it to be sent in for service. As luck would have it, the bearings cast off from the warranty service departments repairs were about the right size for a headset. And since the surgical sanitization procedure killed off the lubrication, but not the bearings, Chris had a ready supply of cast off surgical grade cartridge ball bearings to work his magic with.
Headset cups fresh from the Anodizer await assembly at Chris King's modern factory.
Consider that the bearing assemblies of the time used absolute crap for material. If it had been wine, itd have come in a leaky box that even your most down trodden winod pass on. Even the good stuff of the timethe then revered Campagnolo steel-race headset, while mechanically sound, was prone to failure within a season for the simple reason that the materials were not hardened enough to withstand the rigors that cycling placed on them. Now, all of the sudden, Chris was making a headset that was a vintage wine of the finest quality. Because his was made using surgical grade material that was hardened all the way through: crème de la crème. And then some. Once word of Chris incredibly durable headset trickled out, demandand a very limited productionfollowed.
And then along came the mountain bike. Many cyclists snubbed this upstart way of approaching two-wheeled transport, but a fair number of Chris customers were game to give it a go. But the cheap headsets of the era would literally last a day or so klunking on the local fire roads. It was only a matter of time before the riders in the know were pulling their King headsets from their road bikes to place in their new mountain bikes. And the legend began.
Manufacturing Should Not Destroy in Order to Create
Chris King went into business making headsets and doing contract machining in 1976. It wasnt overnight success, and King was forced to step away from his first love of building bike frames (since resurrected with the Cielo line of craft Road, CX and Mountain Bikes); but in time, he was able to focus on manufacturing only cycling components. The best cycling components he could - but with an ethic behind them.
Manufacturing isn't just about making the very best final product; it's about responsible management of the process through every step. - Credo espoused on the King website
In a nutshell, the Chris King credo turns industrial manufacturing on its head. It is manufacturing with a conscience, with an eye towards sustainability. Heavy industry is typically anything but that. It is creation that comes with a heavy dose of destruction. But King Components does its best to mitigate that destruction where and whenever possible during the manufacturing process and always with an eye towards a greater good.
At the end of the day, it's not only the human touch that defines Chris King's approach to manufacturing his components, but the responsibility for that manufacturing process. Every piece made creates waste metal and waste cutting fluid - in the image pictured here, steel shavings (called chips) and soy oil. King uses sustainably grown domestic soy oil exclusively as a cutting fluid and as lubrication for the machines in his factory. But this fluid coats each and every chip, making them difficult to recycle.
Doing this whole manufacturing thing I figured this kind of stuff goes on. You can either avoid doing it and be idealistic to that point, or you can say Im gonna find a better way to do that, mused King. Doing it with a conscience, right? Knowing that I worked well with my hands and knowing that I worked well with this kind of (sustainable) thinking I made that choice to pursue that [sustainable manufacturing]. I just looked at it with the thought that, this comes to me easily, so why not pursue it? But lets find a path through it that makes sense."
Recycling metal chips a simple economic necessity in an industry that "wastes" so much material in process of creation. But dirty chips are much, much harder to recycle. At King, all remnant chips are collected, placed into appropriately labeled bins (steel, ti, aluminum) and then subjected to the tender mercies of 400 tons of force from a hydraulic press that squeezes nearly all the remnant soy oil from the chips and forms them into the infamous King "pucks." The compressed biscuits allow the metals to be recycled as a higher grade than would loose chips.
This is the ethic that makes King products so unique. Yes, his components are manufactured with precision in mind: every part uses the best materials possible and they are touched by hand multiple times during the creation process, making for an insane level of quality and control. The key, though, is that every part is created with the concept of sustainability in mind: all waste manufacturing materials are recycled to a degree virtually unheard of in industrial manufacturing98% of his waste lubrication is reclaimed and re-used; waste water enters the sewer system nearly drinkable. Each step along the way allows for creation of an end product that, if properly maintained, will last the lifetime of a bike or more, thus creating an even smaller footprint than a similar but disposable component that needs to be replaced constantly.
Ethical, Expensive - and Economical?
Pure and simple, Kings approach to manufacturing costs money up front. But in the long run, it actually costs less, both to your wallet and to the environment. How? Do the math: on the one hand, you can purchase one headset that costs $130 or so retail and lasts 10 years or more if properly maintained. Usually more. Or you can purchase a $30 headset that lasts for a year or less. Yes thats $130 up front, but over the course of five years of $30 headsets, its a net savings financially as well as significantly less waste material entering the environment. Even if you dont really care about the environment, you cant argue with the economic savings of purchasing one component one time vs. multiple times.
King recovers 98% of the soy manufacturing oil, which is then filtered, clarified, and sent back out for re-use in King's CNC machines. It's not a perfect system, but darn near and it reduces King's environmental footprint considerably.
Sustainability. Quality. Precision. Conscience. This then, is Chris King. It is not only each and every component that bears the name Chris King, it is also each and every person putting time in at the former coffee roasting house that now houses Chris King Precision Components and Cielo Bicycles. And King's ethos extends to his employees as well. Over the course of 2011, King employees commuted to work 70% of the time by bicycle. And there's a readily available reason to ride in: riding miles for cafe credit and vacation days.