Mounting baggage on my 790 Duke meant that I needed to reinstall the ugly seize deal with that was eliminated as quickly as I purchased the bike. It additionally concerned taking the small likelihood {that a} bag would possibly tilt over, contact the high-mounted exhaust pipe and burst into flames – there’s a social media video on the market exhibiting that occur and it wasn’t fairly.

Strangely sufficient, there have been no aftermarket options that elegantly solved the issue. Either they have been excessively cumbersome and utilitarian, or they ignored the position of the exhaust and seemingly adopted that annoying “Arre, kuch nahi hoga beta” angle.

The solely acceptable resolution then was to design one thing alone, which was a horrible concept as a result of I’ve no ability on this regard. I’d want skilled assist to mould my obscure concepts into actuality and that’s the place my buddies at Autologue Aero (a division of Autologue Design) got here in.

So, one sunny morning, the 790 and I had a sometimes enjoyable blast right down to the Autologue facility exterior Pune. First, we mentioned how the undertaking needed to create a glossy warmth protect that continued the strains of the inventory exhaust. This needed to be linked to an extremely low-profile bracket that wouldn’t mess with the bike’s strains, however would enable me to securely mount bag straps. Then got here the enjoyable half.

Out of a heavy-duty briefcase emerged an virtually joystick-like handheld gadget referred to as the Peel 2 CAD 3D scanner. This Canadian-made gadget was plugged right into a laptop computer after which, the 790 was slowly and meticulously scanned. It was fascinating to see the scanned sections slowly seem on the laptop computer display, which represented the info that the gadget was accumulating. Using the laptop computer as a reference, the whole tail part of the bike was ultimately mapped and a 3D render was created. And that was the final time I’d be needing to take my bike to Autologue’s workshop for this job.

The scanned information from this gadget are appropriate with quite a few CAD (computer-aided design) software program like Solidworks or Inventor, which the designer can then use to create the undertaking. With the digital scan of the 790’s tail in place, the design group at Autologue got here up with quite a few digital renders as they tried to place construction to my imaginative and prescient. All these renders have been despatched over WhatsApp earlier than we locked in on a remaining design. The completed product was then made in brushed chrome steel, which might mix properly with the silver end on the 790’s sub-frame.

I’ve to say I’m most happy with the way it turned out as a result of the elements introduced in some much-needed performance, with out making me cringe once I take a look at the bike. Could this undertaking have been executed with out the flowery 3D scanning know-how? Of course. But it introduced in a stage of comfort and buyer involvement within the design course of that may have been a lot more durable with old-school processes. Here, I acquired to reject designs I didn’t like once they have been nonetheless within the digital stage, somewhat than having the half made after which having to start out yet again.

The Peel 2 (there’s now a next-gen Peel 3 mannequin out) is positioned as an inexpensive 3D scanning software, however that is clearly nonetheless a new-age know-how because the gadget prices round $10,000 (over Rs 8 lakh). Nevertheless, it’s thrilling applied sciences like these which can be serving to design homes take their capabilities to the subsequent stage.