Meet the Blackline Ebonite - A CNC Masterpiece
All the experience gathered in the last 5 years was put into one fork - The Blackline Ebonite! Made for modern days enduro riding and burly enough to tackle the toughest trails. Approved by team riders and already a usual sight on podiums around europe.
Equipped with Intend's very own air spring and damping system and further improved by low friction seals for supple performance and small bump sensitivity. All parts are machined from high quality 7075 aluminium. A special touch are the bolted lowers, which use high strength stainless steel bolts to improve stiffness.
 
Why not upsidedown?
To be honest, in my eyes the upsidedown-principle has advantages over the rightsideup. But it also have disadvantages, like every construction.
So the whole Blackline is made to meet the wishes of the costumer. You are scared of torsional stiffness or no guarded lowers ? The Blackline forks will meet your demand, as it is a construction which you know from other brands. No thoughts about torsional stiffness and no thoughts about damaged lowers.
 
What is special about the Ebonite fork?
There is one thing I learned during making suspension fork. The weak point is the joint of the crown and steerertube. It is flexible, can creak and cause problems wherever you look. The steerer tube of the Ebonite is the same of the heavy Intend Flash fork, made with doubled wall thickness, so 6mm insteaf of 3mm of a normal forks steerer. And the upper 1 1/8″ side has 3mm instead of 2mm wall tickness. This is made to increase stiffness everywhere it is necessary.
 
Damping:
The damping of the Ebonite (and also all other Intend forks) is done with a shimstack based architecture. There is a compression piston and a rebound piston which provides the highspeed circuits, and there are lowspeed ports with external adjusters to get the setup done from outside.
There is a long rubber bladder on the inside of the stanchion. This makes it easy to assemble and disassemble the unit for service or tuning.
 
Air spring:
The air spring of the Intend forks are made with a special mechanism to fill both chambers, negative and positive in the same time. There are 2 valves, which gets connected when you mount a shock pump and gets seperated when you dismount the shock pump.
There is a special pneumatic air lip-seal to provide a friction-reduced air system. There is no second positive chamber. With the large negative chamber, the Intend forks have a super supple beginning stroke without a hanging curve in the middle. With this construction it is not necessary to go the way with third chambers. It is easier to set up, it has lower friction (just imagine a normal quadring instead of my pneumatic air seal, and then imagine you have TWO of this quadrings inside, this is the opposite of what you want…) and is easy to manage with volume spacers to avoid bottom out.
And you can add the travel by simply add or remove 10mm spacers, the black ones in the picture.
 
Upper stanchions with Royal Flush Coating
The upper legs of the Ebonite are double butted. This means they have bigger wall thickness at the area of high stress (on the crown side), and lower wall thickness at the area of lower stress to reduce weight.
What is the Royal Flush Coating?
It is a special treatment of the surfaces of the stanchions. It should not be too flattened, but not to rough, just a perfect balance.
And the difference is:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R7LkYRM510E