The Company & the Team
Based in a small town between Munich and the Bavarian alps, you’d never think that one of the most important suppliers of machined bike parts has its factory in a pretty inconspicuous looking farm house. What gives it away is the big parking lot in front of the house and the two red containers – and instead of cows you’ll hear a constant buzz and whirring when you come closer.
Radoxx was founded in 2020 as a partnership between Stephan Pertl (Evocut) as well as Sebastian Kagerer and Michael Flöss (both MTC), who have been supplying European bike manufacturers for many years.
Florian Zeibig – who worked for many bike brands including XLC and Uvex – took over as CEO in 2022 and one of his first tasks was to transform the partnership into Radoxx Components GmbH (limited liability company) in March 2023.
While MTC and Evocut will continue to work for the automotive, motorsport and aviation sectors, Radoxx will focus on bike-specific parts. Radoxx’ goal is to become a European leader in sustainable & local manufacturing and designing bike parts.
As the Radoxx team of 25 is currently growing, more and more mountainbikers work for the company. They say it’s a great experience to manufacture parts that they can actually ride, unlike making tiny parts for big companies that they will never use personally.
They’ve recently hired bike enthusiast Elias Neubauer, who is the kind of humble mountainbiker that will tell you that he “likes to ride his bike from time to time”, but in reality he often ends up on the podium when he races. Recently he completed his four-year training as CNC machinist at Nicolai Bikes. At Nicolai, he learned a lot about bikes and it’s not a secret that he’s keen to come up with his own designs and ideas, but he’s equally happy to work on customer’s projects.
Radoxx, Evocut and MTC moved to this 2000 m2, three-storey farmhouse just a year ago to make it easier to work together. Before that, the three companies were based in Rosenheim, Raubling and Samerberg in Southern Bavaria.
The company uses the following machines and equipment:
- Five 5-axis CNC machines
- Seven 3-axis CNC machines (both 3-axis and 5-axis are mostly from Hermle, DMG and Alzmetall)
- A CNC Lathe
- Various robots for automatization
- An automated laser
- Various inhouse measuring equipment
- Vibratory finishing
- They are working on an inhouse lab for fatigue testing
- SolidCAM for Solidworks
The Radoxx team is proud to do a lot of development and design in cooperation with customers: Florian says that the team often gets CAD drawings that are far from perfect, so they work closely with customers to make sure the products can be made efficiently and to the standards the customer needs. This means that the team might come up with a different a radius or a completely new shape to make machining easier and cheaper. Michael says that while other suppliers simply machine what the customers order, the Radoxx team actually looks at the data they get very closely and helps customers to get the best result.
Quite a few machines at the Radoxx factory can run 24/7, which allows Radoxx to help customers even if they need a lot of machined parts within short time. Usually they can deliver new parts within 6 weeks, but they say that they can be much faster if needed.
The Brother is mostly used to make large quantities of parts such as seat clamps.
Radoxx can do prototypes, but they specialize in serial production. They say that they make prototypes with the same process as they would use for serial production, so the prototype does not only prove that the part can actually be made, at the same time they also make sure it can be made efficiently with the equipment they have. Additive manufacturing is becoming more and more important for first prototypes to check the actual look of a part, so it’s no surprise that Radoxx is working with AM processes more and more often.
Radoxx has an inhouse-laser, vibration tumblers and grinding machines for deburring. They also offer anodizing (which takes place at a partner company) and ultrasonic cleaning.
Florian says that Radoxx is ISO 9001 and ISO 14006 certified and they are working on their ISO 9100 certification. He adds that their goal is to work with quality in mind all the time and not just to check it when a product comes out of the machine.
Radoxx buys most aluminium and steel from European mills (mostly from the Netherlands), however it’s very difficult to track the origin of the actual raw materials of the alloys. For bike products they usually buy metal that comes with a level 3.1 test certificate, which means that the quality of the metal is checked by an accredited test lab.
Today's job – machining new master cylinders for 612-Parts
Today Radoxx will be machining new master cylinders for Felix from 612-parts.com. As Felix also wanted to discuss new products with Radoxx, he came over from Switzerland to meet the Radoxx team and see how his products are made.
Radoxx got the right tools.
It looks like Felix ordered quite a few new master cylinders...
To make sure we can get some nice shots during the first run, Michael and Elias decided to stop the cooling lubricant a couple of times. Check the second video to see what machining actually looks like!
Felix is stoked to hold the first master cylinder of the new batch in his own hands.
We're off to the QC room with the first master cylinder to check the tolerances.
After machining, Michael takes the master cylinder down to the QC room to check the tolerances. It might look staged, but the master cylinder actually came out of the maching with perfect tolerances – 21.000 mm where it should be 21.000 mm. All fittings were checked as well and passed QC too.
This robot will load aluminium blocks into the CNC machine for the next 24+ hours - watching this fully automated process is hypnotizing.
Including his own brakes, of course.
Interview with Florian Zeibig, CEO, and Michael Flöss, co-founder of Radoxx
What was the biggest success you’ve had in the last couple of years?
Michael: Our biggest success is that Florian joined us. He knows everyone in the bike industry.
Florian: We’ve had great success with some products that we’ve made. We were able to deliver 70,000 seat post clamps to an important customer, which is great. It’s also great to work with new and smaller brands such as 612. We’ve worked with Felix from the beginning and it’s great to have him here.
Why should bike brands chose Radoxx as a supplier?
Michael: We machine high quality products and offer really good support. Some of our customers were pretty desperate when they came to us after they made bad experiences elsewhere and we were always able to help them. We can deliver within a short amount of time and we can deliver big quantities if needed.
Can you name some of your customers?
Florian: We work for Intend, 77 Designz, Kavenz, Effigear, 612, Three Rock Components, Haibike, Ghost Bikes and many more.
Which materials do you work with?
Michael: Mostly steel, stainless steel and aluminium. Usually we use 6082, 7020 and 7075 aluminium. However we also work with thermoplastics such as POM. We don’t machine titanium or carbon as we don’t have the right tools yet.
Radoxx mostly works with aluminium and steel, but they also machine thermoplastics such as POM.
Do you have a minimum order quantity?
Florian: Our MOQ is 1. However we are probably not the machining shop that you contact if you just want to get one part machined, usually the goal will be to machine a couple of dozen parts up to thousands.
Can you tell us how much metal you go through each month?
Michael: We don’t want to go into details here, but every 10 days or so our recycling partner comes to collect one of the big red containers outside, which is filled with swarf. All off-cuts, chips and swarf are recycled.
Every 10 days or so, one of these containers - filled with swarf - is collected by their recycling partner.
You’ve got a lot of machines running 24/7, you need a lot of energy to keep them running.
Florian: That’s right. We’re planning to get solar panels on the roof which will cover 20% of the electricity that we need. When we moved in, we installed some heat exchangers in the basement so we don’t need to use the heating anymore during winter. This saves 30,000 liters of oil each year.
Which certifications do you have?
Florian: We are ISO 9001 and 14006 certified and we’re working on our ISO 9100 certification. Recently we also got a “Greenly Bronze” certification. One of our customers went through a certification process at Greenly and we became a part of this as a major supplier.
What is it like to run a company here in the Chiemgau area?
Michael: It’s amazing! It’s a well-known holiday destination, people come here from all over Europe for hiking, cycling and mountainbiking and we get to work and live here. I love it.
Not a bad place to base your company.
What will be the next steps for Radoxx?
Florian: We want to become THE partner and supplier of the European bike industry. Make sure to come to the Radoxx stand at Riva Bike Festival 2024, we’ll have some amazing things to show you. We’re also constantly buying new milling machines – faster and more energy efficient ones.
Michael: I really enjoy working with newcomers such as 612 and having a lot of happy customers. We want to help people like Felix to start a business and it’s amazing to ride the products that we helped to make. We can’t wait for 2024, it will be amazing.
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Inside Radoxx: Factory Tour at the German CNC Machining Heavyweight - Pinkbike.com
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