KCNC is the brand of Ken Chang Industrial Company Ltd of Changhua, near Taichung, Taiwan. The company’s ‘E-catalogue’ touchingly states:

“Ken LIN is our leader and chief engineer, well-honed experience of aluminum and titanium design/machining skills for some of the famous bicycle brands in the industry. ... KCNC staffs are fuelled with the single desire to design and produce our bicycle parts finest possible.”

At least Ken is merely ‘our leader’ rather than ‘our great leader’, ‘our dear leader’ or even ‘our slightly too chubby young leader’. Ken + CNC = KCNC, half-man-half-manufacturing-technique, simple.

I was aware mainly of KCNC as a manufacturer of improbably cut-away derailleur pulley wheels in an even more improbable variation of colours - you know how we love that kind of thing. However I have been told that KCNC make an impressively vast range of components including chain rings, brakes, bottom brackets, headsets and on and on.

Starting in 2010 KCNC started to patent a series of rather interesting derailleur designs. In 2012 KCNC released an ‘E-catalogue’ showing drawings of a derailleur system that used a rotating cylinder mounted in the b-pivot to drive the p-pivot in and out using a spiral groove and pin. Unfortunately, despite this pre-launch publicity, I do not believe that this product ever made in onto the market.