Trek Factory Tour – From Rolls Of Carbon Fiber To Complete Bikes In Waterloo, Wisconsin

We tour Trek’s home facility in Waterloo, WI, where carbon frames are made in the USA, painted and assembled into bikes.

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We take a look behind the scenes at Trek’s USA factory. As one of the only major brands still making carbon fiber frames in the USA, this was an incredible opportunity to find out just how carbon fiber is transformed from big rolls of fiber into finished bikes like the Madone.

Also, the factory is home to Trek’s paintshop, where many all of their Project One bikes are painted up.

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[Music] right we have got a very very special surprise for you all today we are at the Trek Factory Trek have been based in water wiconsin since 1976 and today we’ve got a very exclusive look around their Factory and manufacture in facilities this is going to be very cool I promise let’s go this is absolutely amazing this is the at this is the first thing you get to when you come into the Tre Factory just look at it it’s incredible each area is designed to represent a Tre brand principal but look at the bikes amazing stuff right so each of the areas in the atrium here is based around one of Trek’s brand principles this one is born in a bar because Trek quite literally was born in a barn or their first bikes were manufactured in a barn which is on site here in water Wisconsin we’ll take a look at that in a bit but these are some of the very first bikes so 1976 the TX 710 the first steel frame one of the first 100 steel frames that was ever made so there’s the frame let’s move on from the Retro side of things to raised on rocket science so this is about Trek’s history of innovation and making new products so 1991 the Trek 2500 their first carbon fiber frame this is the seven tube design there was a three tube design as well so each of these carbon tubes is glued or bonded into an alloy lug you can see it’s pretty retro because although you have a carbon fiber frame you’ve got an aluminium fork and if you follow me this way this is the project one area and this is something I’m particularly excited about because I was lucky enough to design a project one bike and I’ve ridden it a couple of times I’m hoping to ride it again but you get to design your own bike the paint job the component Tre and you come up with designs like this if you’ve got a bit of taste just to show the level of effort that goes into project one bikes this one at the top is called real Flames I guess that’s pretty self-explanatory but there’s no set stencil it’s really down to the painter’s interpretation of it and it takes 12 hours for an individual painter to take this from bare carbon fiber to that stunning paint job the final part of the Tre Atrium that I want to look at are the Tre protein bikes so we have got the Tre Sega Fredo Mone red bikes go faster probably we’ve got the Tre Pro Caliber cross country bike moving on we have got Tre dirtt jump bike I wouldn’t even know where to start with that and finally the T session downhill bike so Trek have always supported pro athletes at the top level of the sport and continue to do so across many many branches of cycling [Music] a Tre Amanda frame comes in eight pieces it’s going to take me less than 60 seconds to assemble one I think definitely less than 60 seconds ready 3 2 1 go there we go that was definitely less than a minute so Tre make around 20 fr a day here at this facility in water Wisconsin and this room right here is where it all happens from the raw rolls of carbon fiber through to something very much like the finished product let’s go and take a look glass is on it’s pretty cool isn’t it I actually I’ve got no idea what my what I thought a bicycle frame manufacturing facility would look like but if you didn’t too here it is let’s go over to where it all starts [Music] here we have rolls of carbon fiber this is 12K unidirectional weave each roll of carbon fiber is actually recognizable because the different types of carbon fiber are differently colorcoded here and also stamped there this isn’t white carbon fiber this is fiberglass that is used in some frames and carbon fiber comes pre pregnated with the resin that bonds it all together so it actually needs to be kept in Cold Storage it’s shipped here in refrigerated trucks and behind me is a massive freezer where it’s all kept these two machines cut the sheets of carbon fire we’ve just seen into frame siiz chunks so these are the bit building blocks of your next Tre frame I don’t know what those are but this is a laser guided machine so this is cutting down sections of your of a next Trek amonda frame around 200 pieces go into each frame so there are a huge quantity of pieces cut down and this is programmed to reduce waste as far as possible because carbon fiber is actually quite an expensive manufacturing material and it’s also quite difficult to recycle although Tre do recycle all of their offcuts from this process we do recycle as much carbon fiber material as we possibly can um frames um raw carbon fiber preag um and non-compliant molded Parts test frames warranty returns those types of things um we are making um right now 20 frames a day and then there would be anywhere from 50 to potentially a 100 different hands different people that would be touching the frame throughout its manufacturing process so this is something that you will find a lot more recognizable in the sheets of carbon fiber this is the front end of a Tre Mone frame fresh out of the mold here [Music] we’re now going to take a look at the painting process here at Tre and to do that I need a sight change go wear a lab [Music] [Music] coat before we can go into the painting room we have to go through an a air shower what’s that let’s find [Music] out and we’re in and we are into the paint room this is where TX frames get hand finished so most of most of the frames here are painted by TX paint robot which we’ll look at shortly and these are the ones fresh off the robot cue so these haven’t been wiped down polished or inspected yet literally fresh off the painting press again here we have some more ones fresh off the robot queue and you can see the difference between that raw painted frame and this more or less finished painted frame which has logos and other graphics and that sort of stuff on it you can see everyone hard at work applying Mass and decals so you can see the masks on the inside of the fork where that won’t be painted there so interesting here we have got the UCI certification stickers this is for a de Mano frame and you can just see UCI good to go good to be raced this is where the frames go through to Misty which is T Paint robot so a bunch of the frames go through there some project one frames go through there and all of the race shop Limited sort of stuff goes through here too this is the oven where all of the frames go through to cure the decals and to cure the paint so 15,000 frames are painted here for track and of those 9 to 10,000 are the custom project one frames how cool is this this is where all of the project one bikes are painted and each Trek Craftsman works on the project one bikes until they are fully painted and completed which is why they offer the option for your project one bike to be signed by the person who painted it behind me they’re working on decals and masks so they’ve had one layer of paint they’ve either added the decals or they’ve added the masks it’ll then get another layer of paint just to add to the complexity and look of that paint job this is the assembly floor here at the Tre Factory so the frames come from the paint shop they arrive here which is where they get polished and buffed so I don’t want to touch them so I’ll grease them up but they are very very shiny moving on from the polishing station they come here where the frames are assembled so if you’ve got a Tre Mone that’s where your inner cable routing and things like that get added in moving on from the frame assembly Point although I think we should stop to look at the leopard print bike that’s very special and while we’re stopping to look at custom painted bikes we’ve got the Fabian celara Spartacus limited edition project one bike that he rode at the toor of France I’m going to get out of the way and let you look at [Music] that here we’ve got a long line of project one Mone so they’re all custom painted ready to be assembled into complete bikes I’m going to have a look around and see what this person has chosen to spec their bike with run Trader tires skewers we got the altegra group set all kind of put here in a step by-step process so it really is a manufacturing line process it’s as efficient as possible and hopefully I haven’t messed it up although I suspect I probably have this is where the wheels are assembled so they go from laced hubs and spokes bare rims to the completed bun Trager Wheels we’ve got an incredibly accurate wheel Tru stand there so each wheel is tensioned and true to Perfection here we [Music] go so I have spent absolutely hours designing and choosing my Tre project one bike set my order off and I’m lucky enough to be at the Tre Factory in water Wisconsin to pick it up the moment has arrived here we go drum roll it is mine look at that that is stunning isn’t it I think I did a very good job with the paint so pleased well there you go a complete look behind the scenes at tx’s waterl Wisconsin Factory I absolutely loved looking around there’s a bunch of stuff that I didn’t even know went on here and even better than that I got a souvenir if you’ve enjoyed this video please do give it a thumbs up and hit share too and to see more of our factory tour videos click there and to see our aluminium bike versus carbon bike feature on Trek bikes click down there finally to subscribe to gcn click on our Channel logo