Allmond Cycle Design
'...designing and building the best custom motorbikes on the planet.'
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Custom bike design quest
Roger Allmond’s childhood preoccupation with building pedal bikes from a pile of discarded parts has, over the years, evolved into a passion for “designing and building the best custom motorbikes on the planet”.
After completing a full engineering apprenticeship with Rover Cars in Cowley, he started his own engineering business and for several years supplied machined and fabricated components to customers in the automotive, motor sport and food industries. However, three years ago he decided to concentrate full-time on custom bike design “because this is what I am really interested in and I care more about turning my design ideas into reality than I do about making lots of money”.
His latest completed project, constructed around two-hundredweight of American Victory engine, has been sponsored by XYZ Machine Tools Ltd, the UK’s leading supplier by volume of CNC machine tools. The Burlescombe, Devon, company became involved after Roger Allmond, acting on a recommendation from a friend, ordered two XYZ manual/CNC machines. Nigel Atherton, XYZ’s Managing Director, says he was intrigued by the novel design concepts being pursued by Allmond Custom Cycles and decided to help in its bid to win the British version of the cult ‘Biker Build Off’ TV series.
Taking part in this demanding competition would bring Roger Allmond’s ideas to the attention of a wider audience, as indeed proved to be the case, but it required participants to design and then build a working custom motorbike in just six weeks. The two XYZ machine tools – a 3 hp, 4200 rev/min ProtoTRAK SMX 2000 turret mill and a 7.5 hp, 360 mm swing over bed ProTURN SLX 355 lathe, both fitted with the latest-generation, easy-to-program, ProtoTRAK control – had replaced existing manual machines and enabled Roger Allmond to make significant time savings during the design, modification and build process.
Designated the XYZ in acknowledgement of the build sponsorship, this attention-grabbing aluminium chassis ‘sports-chopper’ has been constructed around a 1507 cc V-twin engine, with its designer working up to 21 hours a day to meet the ‘Biker Build Off’ deadline. “I always had in mind that CNC machines were out of my reach,” he says, “but ProtoTRAK has changed my way of thinking. The two manual/CNC machines are ideal for the machining of one-offs and allow me to implement design changes quickly and easily. The unique style of the XYZ’s aluminium wheels, for example, was created in this way, the rear wheel requiring an oversize 10.25 x 18 inch rim to support a massive 300/35-profile tyre.”
Roger Allmond’s first project, in collaboration with Ducati UK and following on from his design studies at Coventry University, was the stunning ‘Techno-Bobber’ built around a 150 bhp Ducati super bike engine. This took 10 months to complete and, with the exception of the tyres and radiator, everything on the T-Bob was handmade in the self-contained workshop adjoining his cottage in a picture postcard Oxfordshire village. “No-one else builds bikes like I do,” he says, “and each one is an individual statement, a total one-off that gives me tremendous job satisfaction.”
His next projects are two new bikes, one based on a Victory Motorcycles’ engine and the other on a Yamaha MT-01 engine. Both of these will again feature numerous components machined on the two XYZ manual/CNC machines. However, this time round he is using the XYZ-supplied BobCAD-CAM system for the initial conceptual design of components. This is a low-cost option for the off-line generation of accurate toolpaths and NC code. The system’s functionality ranges from basic hole drilling, rigid tapping cycles and simple profiling to the rapid generation of complex multi-axis toolpaths for various surface-creating requirements.
Because Roger Allmond is working as much from an aesthetic perspective as from engineering principles, programs transferred from BobCAD-CAM via a ‘memory stick’ (in lieu of a DNC link) to one or other of the two XYZ machine tools are not necessarily the end of the matter. Building one-offs invariably requires him to refine his designs in the course of the machining process and this is made a great deal easier by the simplicity of the ProtoTRAK control. Incorporating the Windows operating system, the latest-generation ProtoTRAK is still the genuine article in terms of a machine control system designed from the outset for one-off and low-volume production.
Taken together, the ProtoTRAK/BobCAD-CAM combination is already cutting production times at Allmond Custom Cycles by two-thirds or better, one example being the set of fork yokes shown being machined on the XYZ SMX 2000 turret mill.
Despite Roger Allmond’s association with some of the biggest names in the motorcycle world, he insists that designing and building custom motorbikes is not a particularly glamorous business and finding customers prepared to part with several thousand pounds for one of his creations is a challenge. But his enthusiasm is catching and anyone investing in an Allmond ‘special’ can be sure of getting something that is undeniably different – a personalised ‘dream machine’ that harnesses raw power to a very individual style.