3T, a historic Italian company based in Bergamo, in the town of Presezzo to be exact, is ready to build its carbon frames in Italy.

Until now, 3T frames have been produced in Asia, but in order to improve the entire production process, reduce processing times and have greater protection of proprietary technology, very soon everything will be Made in Italy.

The Asian production process has always involved the manual lay-up of pre-impregnated carbon/epoxy and lots of manual labor in finishing. Copying that process over to Italy would have been easy, but not very sustainable.

The company therefore revised its entire production process, deciding to adopt new, purpose-built machinery for Filament winding instead of manual layup, and dry fiber and resin injection instead of pre-impregnated carbon

Filament winding

Instead of sheets of carbon cut in different shapes and applied on a core, filament winding uses a yarn is spun that is spun onto a core to create a carbon shape.

By changing the speeds of the winder, you can change the angle of the yarn on the core.

Dry fiber

Filament Winding is not an easy process as 3T fiber is dry (not yet sticky with resin, see below), it doesn’t want to stay on the core very easily.

Therefore, to simplify and speed up this process, it was decided to use the resin bath. Here the fiber runs through the resin before being spun onto the core.

With pre-impregnated carbon, you have to place the pre-formed frame into a cold mold. Otherwise, the resin starts to react as it hits the mold, before you’ve finished placing the whole frame.

When you use dry fiber, you can stick it into a hot mold and nothing happens. Then you close the mold and inject the resin, at which point the resin starts the curing process. So you can produce frame after frame without having to cool down the mold and heat it up again.

3T has chosen to start this type of production from its top-of-the-range frame, with the aim of arriving at a lighter model than the Racemax, while keeping its stiffness and strength attributes.

100 frames will therefore be produced, as a special Founder's Edition: the first one will be displayed in the company's in-house museum, while the other 99 are going to be sold in limited edition.

It comes complete with fork, seatpost and a few signature customized details:

  • Engraved limited edition metal badge with frame number

  • Custom see-through paint options

  • 2 finish options under the see-through paint (standard or industrial carbon finish)

  • Your name under the clearcoat

  • 1X+2X frame or dedicated 1X frame (perfectly smooth seattube without any inserts for an FD mount)

3T Bikes available
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