DEVELOPMENT

ISO 9001 Research & Development

By carefully reading the key adages of Ernesto Colnago, one can comprehend his most fundamental concept: “the frame is the soul of the bicycle.”
In the past, the development of a new bicycle model was achieved through the understanding, the experience and capabilities of the master bicycle builder; currently, with the advent of new technologies, things have changed. To develop new models in ever more sophisticated materials requires an ever more advanced level of techological application. We work that way every day at Colnago, as our entire model range are developed and created “Made in Italy” in our Colnago Lab (our internal technology research & development lab) where we use state of the art 2D & 3D AUTOCAD for our initial designs, then move to pre-production Nylon models thanks to our fast prototyping process at Colnago Lab.

QUALITY CONTROL

ISO 9001 Quality Control

Colnago is the only bicycle manufacturer world with an ISO 9001 certificate. This has an impact on the product development process and production organization. ISO (International Organization for Standardization) is the only worldwide organization that offers certification in Quality Standards, both in product development (thus regarding the safety and quality of the material used in construction) as well as the quality safety and reliability of each element used in production. Once a company obtains ISO 9001 certification, they must be re-certified year after year with a continuous investment in resources and machinery.
Colnago is one of the few ISO 9001 certified companies that uses both type of testing for certification: the first type of test is on laboratory machines and the secondi is via product field testing from out 7 sponsored professional teams and 3 U23 teams.
Lab tests that follow well defined and accepted ISO 9001 tests are performed on finish products. To perform these accepted ISO 9001, Colnago has a variety of elettromechanical, pneumatic and other custom designed test machines that perform a variety of static and dynamic stress test on our frames that enable us to test a wide variety of factors that makes a Colnago the safest, most reliable frame available.

PAINTING

ISO 9001 Painting

The paint scheme of every Colnago represents a personal and uniquely colorful outer layer for each frame that transmits it’s beauty to our eyes.
Each paint scheme is a one of a kind example, because each Colnago frame is painted and finished by hand, then airbrushed by an expert artist. We’re talking about a handmade process, so each frameset is different from the one made before or after it. In 2006 we introduced a special method of airbrushed silkscreen for special personalized colorways such as EGRS and SUNRISE.