Preventing Bike-Based Beer Blunders at Burning Man

The Burning Man festival may dress in the clothes of the American counterculture, but the event brings enough people to the Nevada desert every year to create a city with a population the size of Gary, Indiana. As a temporary city, Burning Man lacks any kind of public utility service or transportation. That forces attendees towards self-reliance during their stay and they must provide their own shelter, food and water, and transportation. Bicycles are a popular form of transportation, but there is one problem: spilled beers. To avoid such tragedy, Redditor the_colorist built a beer stabilization system for their bike.

Handlebar-mounted cup holders are popular accessories for bicycles, but open beers have a tendency to slosh around in the rough terrain of the Black Rock Desert. Even if the brew doesn’t spill, it is bound to go flat. The_colorist’s creation solves this problem with mechanics similar to camera gimbals. Drones and handheld camera grips often incorporate those gimbals, which use sensors and motors to counteract movement in order to stabilize video footage. This does the same thing, but in only two axes and with passive mechanics like the old-fashioned Steadicams used in the film industry

The “dashboard” with buttons that you see on top of the bike’s handlebars serves another purpose and doesn’t control this stabilization system; it only acts as a mounting point for the linkages. The 3D-printed mechanism consists of two sets of parallel arms with pivot points at each end. Trigonometry being what it is, the parallel arm setup forces the cup holder to remain level at all times. Two springs (one for each set of parallel arms) compensate for the weight of the beer can and absorb bumps as the_colorist rides across the playa. Tensioning bolts provide adjustment to deal with the changing weight of the can as the beer is consumed.

The_colorist designed all of the parts for this project in Autodesk Fusion 360 CAD (computer-aided design) software and then fabricated them with an FFF (fused-filament fabrication) 3D printer. They promised to release those CAD files, but this really only mounts to the_colorist’s custom bike. Still, others can adapt the design to fit their needs on or off the playa.