On The Horizon: Zelex's New No Weld Skeleton, Is It A Game Changer?

In September, some of our team visited China for the 2025 Shenzhen Adult Exhibition and toured factories in the Zhongshan/Guangdong area. They met with Irontech, WM, YL & Jinsan, CLM, Lusandy, Funwest, Top Cy, and SE Doll. These trips help us strengthen partnerships, bring back fresh ideas, preview upcoming products, and stay aligned with the future direction of the industry.

One such upcoming product is the new Zelex skeleton. There have been some rumours going around the doll-world that Zelex were working on a new skeleton. In early 2025 (or late 2024) we were informed by our Zelex agent that a new skeleton was being designed in collaboration with the local university of technology in the Guangdong area. It sounded quite interesting, but the news hadn't surprized me for a few reasons. For one, Zelex had a somewhat typical/basic doll skeleton so no surprizes that they would be updating it, and two, I had made the assumption that they were using honours students or PHD candidates to assist them with their design, as part of their studies. Basically it sounded like a good step for Zelex, but didn't sound like a point of difference nor a game changer for the industry. It turns out I was pretty wrong about that!

 

(the Zelex boardroom, important things happen here!)

 

Our team was fortunate enough to be the first vendor to see the designs, and the first vendor to be able to test the joints.

Whilst at the factory, we discovered that the boss of the Zelex factory in his previous career was managing nuclear power plants. He is a very smart guy! It was in this previous role where he made friends with other very smart people, the type with PHD's and tenure at universities who go about designing jet engines and military equipment amongst other things.

And who better to design a really advanced sex doll skeleton? 

As you may know, Zelex have recently retired a couple of older moulds such as the original 165cm, the 155cm and 172cm. At the same time they have released the V2 Inspiration series upgrade, which adds more detailed skin, better body makeup, extra soft vagina/anus, and more natural finger posing. The retired models were not scanned from real women, whereas the Inspiration series are concentrating on real scans of real women. We were lucky enough to see videos of the process of how they do the scans, and it's quite incredible, we will write an article about the whole process from beginning to end soon, but the relevant part to the skeleton discussion is that the "more natural finger posing" part is achieved with a new hand skeleton:

 

 

The above photo is the standard Zelex hand skeleton, pretty typical of most dolls. It also includes the finger capping which is a nice touch to help avoid finger pokes. 

 

This second image is the Zelex V2 hand skeleton used when upgrading to V2 Inspiration or as default with the new Fusion series. Owing to the improved joints, this one allows for a more natural finger pose. Additionally, with the holes along the fingers, it allows the silicone to knit better into the finger bone. This can help with avoiding things like the skin feeling detached from the bone when touching it, and to help avoid finger pokes as the whole finger moves with bone.

So this one is with us already, and is available to order and rolling out on dolls right now. 

Now - the information we've been waiting for: the rest of the skeleton not just the hand. 

What could make the new Zelex skeleton a game changer? First the material, it is Aluminium. Typical skeletons are heavy steel skeletons. We have seen others come to market lately with a carbon fibre skeleton. There was even some of the carbon fibre type on display at the Shenzen exhibition. Considering the carbon fibre skeleton is identical across the couple of brands I have seen it on, and it simply appears as a carbon fibre version of the current steel skeleton, my educated guess is that it is not a skeleton that is being made in-house but rather manufactured by a skeleton factory. Why is this important? Well ultimately if a brand is making their own skeletons, they have control over production quality, and can do research and development on it quickly and efficiently. Zelex are manufacturing their skeleton in-house, which is great to see. Other premium brands in the industry such as Irontech and WM do the same. It is therefore not manufactured elsewhere and delivered to them already assembled. Making it in house allows them to tweak things, and offer options such as loose joints etc more easily.

Why is aluminium interesting? It is lightweight and strong and it is better at absorbing impacts than carbon fibre or a welded steel skeleton would be. It is also easier to manufacture and costs less, meaning it should be able to be assembled in-house and the price should be reasonable. It is the first time in my memory that a brand has used aluminium for the skeleton. 

Second thing that could make this a game changer - it is not welded. It features no welding points. Experienced doll owners will know - especially in cheaper or older skeletons - the weld is the weak point. The manufactures often put a little tack weld to hold a nut in place, and the tightness of this nut & bolt provides the tension for the joint. A jolt in transit or the gradual progression of time, the weld will eventually break and the joint will begin to slowly loosen (or tighten) as the nut slacks off. Once you have that, it is a matter of cutting the doll open every so often to tighten that nut and maintain the tension, or otherwise her days of standing may be over. The other problem you can get is that the joint becomes too tight, and the force of moving it shears off the U shaped brackets which hold the joints together (picture below). If you have a thin metal tube skeleton (often present in counterfeit dolls), the tubes themselves will flatten and snap.

It is traumatic for a doll owner to go through that, so I have personally (with the help and feedback from our insightful clientele) been pushing brands to try and improve their skeletons. We've seen some brands come at it from different angles. For example, just this year we've seen Irontech do a reinforced skeleton, the joy again of in-house production means that they can react by improving the thickness of the steel tubes which gives their skeleton more strength, and improved the welding of their joints which means they are not easily damaged in the first place. Others like Starpery have moved toward an almost fully gear skeleton, which uses geared joints instead of traditional hinges. Others have changed some joints to gear and left others traditional in a kind of hybrid gear skeleton to get the best of what each joint type has to offer. 

 

This is a typical EVO skeleton with bolted, hinged joints. You can see it as two bolts holding two U shaped brackets together. I have marked with red arrows the place where they often tack weld the nut so it doesn't move. 

 

A gear joint which allows for smoother movement than the hinge, it is typically better than a hinge but cannot be used on every joint. Joints such as shrugging shoulders and head cannot use the gear joint as the movement of these joints can tend to trap the doll's material into the joint. 

Unfortunately we weren't able to take photos of the new Zelex joints until release. However what they have is, I expect, going to be a pretty ground breaking way of making the skeleton and joints. We went through the 3D design of the skeleton and it was quite remarkable. It is unlike any of the skeletons I have seen on the market. Instead of using a bolt and nut to provide or maintain the tension, they are using a new type of high strength material to clamp and lock the joint together. When stopped, it wont readily move, but a little pressure will unlock it and allow the joint to move really nice and smoothly. We were able to test a leg joint they had in the office, and it moved very nicely - once it was in motion it was much easier than a typical joint, but when stopped it had a nice (and reassuring!) strength to it. 

I think bringing in a new team with fresh eyes has really hit the mark in terms of injecting some new ideas into the space. Previously we have seen improvements or evolutions of the same skeleton, from hinge joints to ball joints to gear joints, to carbon fibre material - but always the same type of thing. This one looks very different, at least in the plans we have seen. 

The music to my ears was the testing phase. The designers were able to hook it up to a machine to test the joints repeatedly. We saw the results of the testing - over 5000 movements tested and the joint remained steady, meaning that the joint had neither tightened nor slackened over and beyond a typical lifetime of a doll. Given the chart showed almost no decline in joint tightness throughout all 5000 movements, I expect it is a skeleton that could easily outlast your doll, or extend the life of a typical doll by a  long time!

From what we have been told, this skeleton should be making an appearance on the market sometime during October or November 2025. So it is not quite ready to manufacture as of the time of writing, but it is so close that we could start taking your pre-orders! They informed us that it would eventually be rolled out in all models, the Inspiration, SLE and Fusion series, though I expect we may see it in the Inspiration and Fusion series initially - another blog coming about the upcoming Inspiration releases! 

As always - just get in touch if you need any help or have any questions! The Zelex collection is here!