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Giant invited a number of tech editors from across the world to its global headquarters in Taichung, Taiwan, as part of its launch event for the tenth-generation TCR Advanced SL. While the bike itself was noteworthy, the part of the trip that was almost even better was touring the factory where that frame – and thousands of other ones – was made.
Giant Taiwan Manufacturing – the official name for the brand’s flagship frame manufacturing facility – was originally founded in 1972, and today, it produces roughly a million frames annually and employs approximately 2,200 people. The facility is split roughly in two with a large central driveway of sorts separating the two halves: one side is where all the aluminum production occurs, while the carbon fiber work is done on the other side. Giant produces all of its premium carbon fiber and aluminum frames at GTM, both under its own label and for a number of other major brands. Keep in mind, too, that this is just one manufacturing hub; Giant has five other frame factories in China, another two in the EU, and one more in Vietnam.
I’ve had the privilege of visiting GTM twice now in my career, and what’s perhaps most striking about it is how vertically integrated the operation is. I unfortunately only got a more cursory tour of the carbon fiber side this time around, and that’s what’s depicted in this gallery. Giant is perhaps the only major brand that truly makes its frames from scratch, starting with dry carbon fiber (thread), mixing its own resins, and rolling out its own pre-preg sheets instead of buying it pre-made from a third party. Those sheets are cut into much smaller pieces at precise angles and shapes depending on where they’re used, they’re placed around internal mandrels by both hand and robot, they’re cooked on-site, finished, painted, and so on. It all happens right there, under one giant – ahem – roof.
And on the aluminum side? Again, I unfortunately didn’t that part of the tour this time around, but Giant has a separate facility, Giant Light Metals, that actually makes its own aluminum alloy – not aluminum tubing, but the raw material itself. Tubes are also extruded in-house, hydroformed, cut, welded, you name it. Dropouts are forged on-site. It’s a truly astonishing thing to see, but that’ll unfortunately have to wait for another day.
In the meantime, please enjoy even this cursory visual tour of how Giant makes its carbon fiber frames. There’s much more to the process than what’s shown here, but hey, some things are apparently better kept to themselves.
Giant’s iconic water tower looms large over the factory as you approach the grounds.Giant is one of the major bicycle brands on the market, no question, but it’s also the world’s largest manufacturer of bikes, including for several other big brands. Giant operates nine factories worldwide, but this one in Taichung is its premier facility where all of its high-end models are made.The factory is roughly split in half, with one side manufacturing carbon fiber frames and the other side doing aluminum ones. According to Giant, this facility alone manufactures over a million bikes per year.The “loom room” is where every Giant carbon fiber frame starts. Giant is the only major brand to manufacture its composite frames starting from raw dry fiber, and this is where it’s turned into unidirectional pre-preg fiber sheets.Rolls of dry carbon fiber are loaded on to the rack at left and fed into the laminating machine.Several steps are required to get the fibers to lay perfectly flat.Making pre-preg in-house offers several advantages. For one, it’s more cost-effective for Giant to make the stuff itself. It also offers more control over the company’s manufacturing processes in general (such as adjusting resin and fiber combinations), and there’s never a worry that there’s too much pre-preg sitting around aging in the freezer.Resin is added to this set of rollers to form a uniform layer that’s then applied to a separate backing sheet.Giant blends its own resins in-house, too.The white sheet up top already has a uniform layer of only resin applied to it. In this step, the resin layer is only partially cured, laid on top of the dry fiber layer, and that “sandwich” is then sent through a series of heated rollers.A separate sheet of plastic is then added on top to form a sort of carbon fiber sandwich.Heat and pressure are applied through a series of rollers to ensure the dry fiber is fully infused with the uncured resin.Easy as pie.Finished pre-preg sheets are neatly bundled onto big cardboard tubes.The edges are trimmed to create the desired width of sheet.Finished pre-preg rolls are bagged for storage. Giant says it typically keeps about a 15- to 30-day supply ready to go at any moment.I said, “brrrr, it’s cold in here!” How cold? About -12°C (10°F).Multiple racks of spools allow Giant to switch up fiber types reasonably quickly depending on what’s needed.Over on the other side of the room sits this machine where two-layer bias-ply fiber sheets are created.Creating these 45/45° sheets is a surprisingly manual process.We unfortunately weren’t allowed to shoot images in the room where these plies were cut, but the way they’re organized in these foam sheets is a key element of Giant’s production process.The laminating room is one of the most carefully controlled areas of the factory. Here, each individual piece of carbon fiber is placed by hand over various internal pre-forms to build each frame subassembly.Hair dryers are staple items found in every carbon frame factory I’ve ever visited. Warming up the plies slightly is a quick and easy way to make them more pliable, which aids their placement around complex frame shapes.While there are some aspects of carbon frame production that are automated, it’s still a highly manual process, which is a big reason why carbon frames are as expensive as they are.Getting closer …Giant says it was able to cut down on the number of individual plies on the new TCR Advanced SL by using much larger pieces. That might seem obvious, but the reality is it’s easier to place smaller pieces of carbon fiber than bigger ones.The internal pre-forms are usually melted out later on in the process.Bottom bracket shells are typically among the most complicated pieces to build.Lay-up schedules (basically the recipe book for where plies go) sit in a simple filing shelf over in one corner of the laminating room.Giant forms the entire TCR Advanced SL front triangle as a single part.Giant continues to prefer the PF86 press-fit bottom bracket format for its frames. There’s obviously a lot of hate directed at press-fit these days – and many companies are reverting to threaded – but for whatever reason, Giant has managed to do a good job of sticking to impressively tight tolerances here to prevent creaking.I’ve tried laminating some carbon fiber parts before, and I can assure you that it’s trickier than it seems. The material is quite finicky to work with!When the frames are fully laminated, they’re loaded into two-piece steel clamshell molds that are heated under pressure in industrial ovens for curing.Much of the frame curing area is dedicated to materials handling. Giant uses steel molds instead of lighter-weight aluminum ones because of its production volumes (steel molds last longer), and the suckers are mighty heavy.Giant has multiple ovens in progress at any given moment.What the front end of the Giant TCR Advanced SL frame looks like in its raw form, fresh out of the mold.These sorts of “staircase” joints are common in carbon fiber frame production as the construction method loads the overwrapped strips in shear where it offers the most strength.Giant has an awful lot of molds on hand for various carbon fiber parts.Giant manufactures a staggering number of carbon bicycle frame models, and each of these molds costs tens of thousands of dollars. Keep in mind particularly high-volume models will have multiple molds for a single size, too – as many as five, in fact.Carbon parts generally come out of the molds looking pretty good after curing. However, there’s still some fine-tuning required, such as knocking off excess resin flashing, and occasionally some sanding and filling in of small voids.Giant claims that each and every carbon fiber fork it produces undergoes an X-ray inspection to ensure there are no defects. According to Giant, this is the only part of the factory that’s staffed and running 24/7.X-ray inspection isn’t exactly commonplace in the cycling industry, but I’m starting to see it more often.Fun fact: I didn’t realize until I saw these that Giant uses a separate steerer that’s bonded to the lower fork assembly.A robotic CMM (coordinate measuring machine) checks the alignment on a freshly finished TCR Advanced SL frame.Giant’s test lab is a beehive of activity.It’s not just frames and forks that are being tested, either.Carbon forks are among the most safety-critical parts on a road bike, so it’s no surprise that a lot of attention is paid there.Did you know there’s a test for flat-mount brake tabs?These poor, tortured souls.Giant also manufactures carbon fiber rims in this facility, using a mix of automated and manual processes that I unfortunately wasn’t allowed to document.Giant manufactures an awful lot of carbon fiber rims, too. In fact, the company claims to make more carbon fiber rims than any other company globally.Modern carbon fiber parts typically come out of the mold looking pretty good, but they still usually require some additional finishing work before they’re truly considered ready to go.The bicycle assembly area is positively massive. And don’t just look at what’s happening on the floor; look up, too.Giant clearly was highly motivated to make sure there was a decent stock of its new TCR Advanced SL flagship road bike ready to go when it was launched in March.Frames that are ready to be assembled into complete bikes take a circuitous route down to the factory floor.Astonishingly, Giant says it only takes about 15-20 minutes for workers to turn a bare frame into a complete bike, fully tuned and packaged in a box, ready to ship.I’m not sure if it’s commonplace for frames to be assembled while positioned upside-down like this, but that’s how it’s done at Giant.Air tools are commonplace on the factory floor, preset to prescribed torque values.Bar tape is applied by two workers simultaneously. From start to finish, it’s barely a minute. Bonkers.Not surprisingly, a factory with a scale like Giant doesn’t bother with individual rolls of bar tape. It’s instead supplied in a massive roll that’s then cut to specific lengths depending on the model of bike being built.Parts arrive at each station on a just-in-time basis – as in literally minutes before they’re needed.Pretty much ready to go.Complete bikes are periodically pulled off the line for inspection.Completed bikes are loaded into boxes here, and then straight to the warehouse.And off they go!
