Give me a break. That stuff should have been done LONG before the Kickstarter campaign. Have you watched the original Kickstarter video? Let me quote it, "We're ready and excited to go." No Helix was not ready, though they may have been excited to go. Thirteen months and not a bike in sight. Well that's not true, there are the pretty pictures that are posted. Don't know if the bike works but you get photos.

Typically when you watch Kickstarter campaigns they say, we just need funds for tooling. . . The products are well past the prototype stage. Not Helix, still tweaking, still developing.

Brompton, Dahon, Tern, Origami, Downtube etc. etc. Sure it's difficult, the market is small, that doesn't give you carte blanche to take people's money and not produce something that you promised.

I want this bike to succeed. I live in the same city as this owner of this company and if he builds bikes here, its great for the economy and it gives us something to brag about. Think about the connection between Brompton and London.

I want people to get their bikes but what has been presented so far does not instill confidence in Helix. There certainly is a continuum on this subject. We have the apologists like yourself on one side and we have people like Joe on the other. I sit closer to Joe on this one, though I wouldn't call him a crook. A crook would have taken the money and walked away. Helix is actually still trying to produce one bicycle. It would make me happy to eat my words on this one, and I will be the first to say I was wrong, if anybody gets a bike before the summer of 2017.

My position has consistently been that a few people will end up with a folding ti bicycle at an appropriately high price. That's not what this guy promised and took money for, so I will not be impressed if he gets that far.

From the last update:

Basically what the inventor is saying, is that he's now at the point where he was exactly a year ago. With a bike that is ready to go into production. The huge response of the kickstarter campaign led him to critically review the original kickstarter bike. Not saying that's good or bad, just what's happened. He played his cards close to the chest so backers didn't know much of what was going on in between updates. Basically it was a continuous design review that led to a year of re-design. A few months went down the toilet due to the abandoned cast&bonded lug design.

Lots of backers (if not all) are disappointed with the extra year of delay. Most are happy with the above result.

Joe, if you assume for a moment that the automatic welding process is successful, then the basic titanium material is not that much in landed cost. A titanium frame does not have to cost THAT much more than say a carbon frame or even an aluminium frame, always assuming that these will be built robotic mass production scale and not one-offs. I definitely don't see that it is an impossibility. Our Ti Swift frames are not dis-similar in complexity, and these cost $1000 per frame-set. They were welded one by one by an experienced artisan welder, and a jig had to be made for the welding that was only used for less than 10 frames in the end. You can see that one-off production cost even in China would not be so cheap as to offset this huge disadvantage.

So don't be blinded by the frame material, that is a small part of the whole.

"Thank you for your email. It's great to hear that you are an avid cyclist and traveler and that you have an appreciation for folding bikes. Helix will definitely be offered for review. We have taken extra time to refine the design and we are very much looking forward to starting production in the new year.

We hope to welcome you to the Helix family in the future. Please do not hesitate to reach out again.

Kind regards,

The Helix Team"

They started taking pre-orders (maybe since a few days ago?). You don't need to put any money down right now, but if you pre-order, you'll need to make a 50% deposit and decide your choice of model on 20th January 2017 and your bike won't ship until June, although I wouldn't be surprised if it ends up being later...

I reserved one, but I think there is a fairly high chance that I'll cancel if not a single Helix has been shipped to backers or reviewers by the deposit payment date. It's a ****ing gorgeous design, so I really want them to succeed.

I've loved having the benefits of a folder since I bought my Tern Verge x10 a few years ago. The x10 has a design that is far more compromised as a result of the fold than the Helix, such as the awkward fold (easier to carry unfolded!), smaller wheels and issues with chain dropping off, which they fixed on recent models by adding a little plastic arm... It actually rides quite well though, which is why I bought it instead of a Brompton, and have done a few pretty epic rides with no issues.

Doesn't sound promising if they aren't already delivering any after such a long time.

Yes, its indeed prudent to wait till you see if early backers get deliveries (and in numbers, not just a trickle ) before going forward. It looks nice but I still have many reservations about that fork design.

Both of mine are due 1/26/2017 (according to my dashboard countdown - backer #29). Don't know whether that's arrival time or shipping.

But what I'm more pissed about is that you guys who pre-order will get it at the same price I pledged for! So consider yourselves lucky! If Helix doesn't pan out, you didn't lose over $3200!

That shipping date is highly questionable in my opinion unless it really gets realized. Its slipped too many times already.

And besides, if they are not shipping before people commit to pre-orders (20th Jan), who knows if its just another round of milking 'funding' instead ?

Would you happen to have any new updates directly from them for being such an early backer ??

For all the parts to trickle in, need maybe 2 months and more since there is still the X'mas / New Year period to contend with in the meantime. If they want to ship by then (26th Jan), then at least a significant portion of the parts for these bikes would need to have arrived at the factory already. You still need a few weeks to ramp up assembly production.

At the very latest, all the parts and frames will need to be ready for final assembly and packing before X'mas rolls along.

The longest lead items are the wheels, expected mid December. One hopes that in the mean time, the factory site is being prepared. A big item, the welding chamber is either built or still in progress. Until that is installed in the factory, nothing else can happen - frames can't be welded.

It will be really cool if they actually get this off the ground. I hope he has held on to most of the money he got to build the bikes...

Normally for automated production processes, in this case the welding, it will take at least a few weeks to get things dialed in.

So unless you start seeing pre-production tooling trial run pieces within the next 2 weeks, the January 26 ship out date looks shaky at this point in time.

Not forgetting that you will lose at least 2 weeks over the X'mas / New Year period. So they will have about 6 weeks to sort everything out from this point forward though.

Yes, date is suspect, but I just put it out there so that people can know what *new* timelines we've been given. If it's just getting a few bikes shipped out in late January, that may be possible since I am within the first 30. But if Jur's bike has the same due date as mine, then I think there's a serious problem.

I don't think any of us get any new updates as often as we'd like, so I probably don't know more than the rest of you.

another round of deposits...... that sounds alarming to me

The pre-order will include taxes - whereas the backers will get the bike with no tax (you basically made an investment). So not quite the same price.

I hope no one is dumb enough to dump more money into this "project" now. This fool needs to produce some bicycles and put them up for sale, then we can talk about sending him money.

Is that you, KevinTory?

I still rest my case.

I use my real name, and I've been suspicious of this Kickstarter scam going way back. It may be a great bike someday at some price, but so far it's been nothing but a charity drive.

Jur:

I spent the past two hours reviewing the Helix patent, videos and newly released pictures. I noticed based on your recent pictures, Helix abandoned the folding fork because it's missing the "Transfer Arm and Handle" according to the patent. I figured Peter Boutakis was having difficulty developing a folding fork that wasn't going to become litigation nightmare. Peter maybe a welder, programmer and machinist but the fork was going to require a major engineering feat beyond his current skills.

If you study the patent, technology involved in the fork quick release mechanism was simplistic. Pulling the handle up pushes a coil which moves a wedge surface between the fork and head tube. After, a slight turn of the handle locks the fork into place keeping it from folding. I'm not certain they could ever achieve front fork rigidity or the degree of safety needed in producing thousands of folding bikes using his design.

Best wishes,

https://patentimages.storage.googlea...1-20161006.pdf

Thanks for the patent link. That one seems to have covered the original Kickstarter design, much of which was re-designed.

Yes, the new photos show a different folding fork lock. A new patent application has been lodged to cover the new design. In the photos you'll see a knob above the fork arm crown; that is the knob operating the new design's lock. Apparently one pulls and twists on the knob. Guesses, as no details have been divulged.

Those joints look to be pretty complex and possibly "delicate" for such a robust application as in a bicycle don't they ?

Update: "Robot and positioner" have now arrived!

I think they flood the weld area with Argon---some gas anyway---when they try to weld Titanium with oxygen present.

If they were going to build them that way would be a very very expensive process.

I know only a little about Titanium welding....