Intense Cycles produces their aluminum bikes in their Temecula, CA factory. Inside, you can follow along to learn more about how this process is completed at Intense’s facility.

Chad Peterson is one of the new faces at Intense Cycles who was recently hired in as their Product Director. He walked us through some of the rough steps that Intense performs to create a bike in their Temecula factory.

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Intense has also brought in a lot of technologies in-house to provide better quality throughout their processes. They still maintain a lot of HAAS machines to make all of the CNC parts that you see on their bikes.

Jeff Steber is the man behind Intense Cycles. He has brought in a lot of new faces to help shape the future of Intense Cycles. He’s proud of the success they’ve had to date and is excited for the future.

As the adoption of Carbon Fiber has increased in the bike community it’s great to see this fabrication area still being used. While the welding area has seen some reductions from our first visit to Intense Cycles, Rick the Welder and a handful of others still remain ensuring the aluminum bikes get welded up.

When you make aluminum bikes, you need a heat-treating machine.  This heat-treating area has allowed Intense to complete their aluminum frames in house without having to send them out. The parts go up into the oven for heating at high temperatures and once they’ve sustained enough heat they are then quenched.

During the process of welding, heating, and cooling the aluminum products, things can get out of tolerance.  After the frames are quenched they are in an annealed state and makes the frames malleable.

The apparatus above allows Intense to adjust the frame after its come out of the oven. As the frame is in a malleable state, they are able to adjust things easily at this time to help ensure things are straight and ready for the consumer.  You can see this process in action in the video at the top of this post. Previously Intense had a local company doing these heat-treating operations. If a heat-treated frame didn’t meet their quality control standards this could add additional delays. By bringing this technology in house, Intense was able to improve their quality control on their frames as well as reducing cost and transportation.

After the frames are adjusted, they are put back into the oven to artificially age the frames to their specifications quicker so they are strong enough to be ridden quicker without waiting on mother nature.

Facing, chasing, and reaming are also done on-site. This is where the seatpost, headtube, and other junctions get cleared of debris to ensure proper fitment with the remaining bicycle parts that get installed.

In Part 1, we chatted with Andrew Herrick about some of the changes at Intense that you should take a look at if you haven’t already.

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