Gusset S2 Grip Development
We’ve made grips for a long time, our File push-on grip has been a stalwart in our product lineup for over 15 years. We also recently updated our 9-year-old File lock-on grip to the Single File grip, with a 30mm diameter and single clamp design.
The Gusset S2 grip development came online as part of our next-generation S2 (Series 2) product line up and we wanna shout about it! We spent the last 2 years designing and perfecting it for your hands, from ours.
We started with a flat two-dimensional drawing of the design on a scrap of paper after a ride led to us wanting features we couldn’t get elsewhere. Hours, days, months, and years were poured into the design and ergonomics of the design, feel, and comfort of the S2 grip. A large comfortable diamond knurling sits in the palm of your hand, and smaller sharper knurling sits under your fingers on the underside.
We decided at the very beginning that having long ribs for your fingers underneath made a huge difference to all-weather performance and these were the starting point of the design. Another key feature we felt we had to have were ribs on the outside/top to help you identify the end of your bar when riding and also to keep your hands in place over rough ground.
One of the guys here has what we can only describe as an ‘abrasive thumb’ and tends to wear his grips out (and skin) where the thumb sits against the bar. So we added a horizontal waffle style pattern underneath, parallel to the bars just for thumbs to give extra material for comfort and grip when pulling back.
Sadly we lost the scrap of paper we used for the initial sketch, but after some time arguing over features, we worked the design into Solidworks as you can see here. The design is then wrapped around a cylinder to make a grip, there’s a lot more to it but we’ll cut out the waffle (pun intended), it’s complicated.
After we were truly happy with the two-dimensional drawing, we had some 3D prints made.
As you can see on the left (or top if you’re looking on a mobile) print, the knurling is unfinished and the thumb waffle underneath is different from the finished product below. This 3d print allowed us to analyse the design in hand and change the orientation of the waffle to have a great impact on performance and increase grip.
After lots of tweaking the design, the design below was the final version of the print that we signed off on for the Gusset S2 grip development. We put it into production and we’re super stoked with the design as we’re sure you will be too!
#S2
