Secret electronic
Campagnolo Gruppo
We have discovered a project that Campagnolo has been working on for
years. It is a fully electronic transmission. A racer from Veneto named
Sella took it to the Amateur Giro dItalia. It can be seen in stores in
2005, but the first tests have shown that the system already functions
well.
Campagnolo are testing an
electronic transmission system. The guests of Bicisport at the Amateur
Giro dItalia noticed it. There was a Zalf Fior racer named Emanuele
Sella, with a fractured finger. When you have a fractured finger,
especially if it is the thumb, it is practically impossible to shift
with Ergopower. Instead Sella (who, however, withdrew after a few
stages) continued to pedal and shift without apparent difficulty. How on
Earth? He was using the Campagnolo electric [transmission], becoming one
of the secret testers of the company from Vicenza.
Only ten models
Seeing the innovation and certain that it was a prototype, we could have
moved in two directions: publish the photos sending the explanation of
the product at some future time, otherwise attempt to violate the
technical casket of Campagnolo, going directly to the point. The second
route was the more fruitful: appreciating fair play, the heads of the
house of Vecenza have revealed (in part) the secrets of the new
electronic gruppo. The system, in fact, is still far from marketing, but
the fact that it arrived on the road to test means that the project is
in any case at a good point [in its development] and that the
reliability achieved is convincing.
We have now carried out ten prototypes, explains the commercial director
Angelo Caccia, So that racers could tell us the perceptions that they
had using them. In the next months we will make changes that will be
substantial and, if all goes well, we will go in production in a couple
of years.
12 years of study
Joseba Arizaga, who is responsible for communications in Campagnolo,
guided us on the genesis of the product. The electric rear derailleur in
itself wouldnt be a novelty. Mavic already arrived there for years: Why
should Campagnolo be better and more reliable? I began to think of it 12
years ago, recalls Arizaga, Just when Mavic put the first version of the
electronic gruppo on the market, but since we didnt have experience in
the area and we didnt go to produce something that may not be actually
reliable, we grabbed each other all the time that served. Therefore a
department in Campagnolo was created for the development of electronic
devices. The system is innovative because unlike the previous
experience, it involves an internal transmission, front derailleur
included.
Top-secret Project
The engineers are prohibited to talk about it. It is top-secret, even
the acronym of the project was internally sealed at Campagnolo. The
system functions thanks to a battery, that in the actual version isn't
aesthetically at the height of the product. It is a rechargeable
battery, explains Simone Roncali, director of marketing, like those of
the cell phone and it will stay near the water bottle. Its autonomy is
variable and quantifiable in a few thousands of shifts, but the
performance and the length varies according to the uptake, for which
there will be a smaller consumption in the activation of the rear
derailleur and definitely greater with the front derailleur.
The servant front derailleur
The rear derailleur has more or less the same geometry of a traditional
rear derailleur. There is the parallelogram but there isn't the spring,
but a small electric motor that moves the parallelogram at its will.
What required more effort, continued Roncali was the front derailleur,
because the same movement required more energy and it is less easy by
indexing, I saw that the fork must move the chain then return back to
the center. The difficulty isn't to build a gruppo that functions well:
that there already is. Our objective is to industrialize it in a way
that is reliable like the other gruppos and make one that can be
maintained by all. One can't think that one must come back to Vicenza
every time.
Super-soft controls
The commands for now have the same shape as the Ergopower, the more
ergonomic deduction: if it changes, the change concerns the other
gruppos as well. Certainly, with respect to the Record Ergopower
controls, those of the electronic [gruppo] weigh less. In the actual
version, clarifies Roncali, the weight is one of the less urgent
objectives, even if the final goal was to have a gruppo that thinks like
a Record. For this the body of the rear derailleur will be made of a
composite, perhaps the same as the Ergopower commands.
Wireless, no thanks
Unlike Mavic, which had planned the functioning to radio impulses
between the controls and the rear derailleur, Campagnolo decided to play
it safe. "In this system," says Roncali, "the rear
derailleur comes to move in part thanks to the impulse of the solenoid
and for the rest from the energy derived from pedaling. Our transmission
is based instead only on the little motor and on an entirely cabled
system. We will also have weighed the wireless solution (without cables,
ed.), but we have found that it absorbs more energy, weighs more and
creates interference. I must go with our products all over the world,
how do we know that they wont get interfered with by cell phones, remote
controls, radio or television? I rode with my first wireless
cyclocomputer, a Cateye, while I was at home in front of the television.
It was not working there. Only later, reading the instructions, I saw
that the television signal impedes its functioning. We are Campagnolo
and on the instructions we write all, but could we go out with a product
that offers the kind of inconvenience of this type?"
