On my previous post I got to discover that the new design for the 2017 Brompton bike model is much more robust. Didn’t get to understand if it was designed on purpose or was a technical difficulty. My hunch was that they enjoyed the design and it made construction simple. However with experience they concluded that it was a problematic design and went for a new design. They could have just reduced the central bar length but instead almost removed it to a more challenging design at least for manufacturing.

Bent and unbent version

FreeCAD produces nice images and this one is an undeformed vs deformed shape. Here I think it is visible that near the stem is where most of the stresses will be generated. So if you have a handlebar from a bellow 2017 model take special care to not pressure in an exaggerated manner the handlebar down.

Special thanks: I would like to thank the FreeCAD forum team and in particular Bernd for providing troubleshooting for FreeCAD  and showing how to do the deformed and undeformed image.