How Smart Turbo Trainers Are Made | GCN's Elite Factory Tour

Elite areone of those Italian Brands with really rich heritage in cycling and we're lucky enough to have been invited out to their headquarters to get a feel for the company and get our hands on their latest and greatest smart trainers.

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This is Elite's showroom and in here, you can get a little bit more of a feel for the brand. Now, it's their trainers that we're really keen to get a look at today, and in particular their smart trainers.

First step is the team in here who are the hardware team. Now, they design, then next door, they have their prototyping room with their very own human 3D printer, Stefano.

When all the hardware is laid out in front of us, it looks quite complicated. So, I'm gonna try and pull out the two most important components. Firstly, this one here, which is the step motor. Now that's the bit that's responsible for automatically adjusting your resistance.

Then, over here, we've got what's called the OTS, the optical torque sensor. Now, this is the power meter. Now, it works by having these two toothed cogs pushed onto either side of an axle. Under torque, the positions of the teeth will change relative to one another by tiny amounts, but they will be detected by the laser sensors.

So this is the assembly line for smart trainers. Firstly, we have the OTS power meter going in, and the main flywheel axle. Then, the laser sensors for the OTS, the step motor and magnets, the base, the flywheel belt, the tensioner, the cooling fan, an finally the flywheel and the printed circuit board.

We've got our assembled smart trainer now, but it's not doing very much, cause first we need to give due credit to the team in here, the software team. Now, it's a sign of the time perhaps that a company like Elite have got a team of six who are spending all their days writing things like apps, like the Elite pedalling app, and indeed, writing algorithms on how to interpret power data as well.

Each and every smart trainer is tested and then calibrated in a process that lasts up to 45 minutes. Now the Drivo is rated as accurate to 1%. The Diretto, is rated to 2.5%.

Now when we said that every interactive trainer goes through this quality control process, we really mean it. Including these Arion digital rollers. Now, given that they are unique to Elite, this machine is therefore also unique in the world, they think.

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