[Closed] 3D Printing Bike Parts?????

Have a chat with olsen bikes - he does a lot of this.

Chap at work printed me some Fox seal guides which were brilliant:

These were printed on a Creality CR-10, but he's got his eyes on an Ultimaker, but they ain't cheap!

I'd get one myself, but in truth, I don't have the time to spend fiddling with it and would only use it very occasionally, but these seal guides were a life saver at the time, so I can appreciate the value of them.

Personally, I think I'd buy a cheap lathe first for making small, metal parts as I reckon it would be more useful for me.

http://empire-cycles.com/article.php?xArt=31

Empire Do

http://road.cc/content/news/84238-video-charge-3d-printed-titanium-dropouts-being-made

Charge were doing it

If you want anything printing I can do it for you relatively cheaply, can do plastic or Ti-6Al-4V my email at gmail.com if you have anything.

Printed myself a little Wahoo mount for an Enve Garmin intergrated mount 🙂

I’ve got chainrings, stems, topcaps, seatpost clamps, spacers and end caps all printed in either Ti64 or ScAlMalloy.  It’s great.

3D prototype printing with no prior CAD/CAM or 3D printing experience. That is going to be a steep learning curve! Depending on how accurate you want the prints to be, it may take you a lot of fiddling with settings, etc to get them spot on.

That being said, we all started somewhere, not knowing a lot. You won't be able to print a top cap bolt accurately though. I don't know if that 3D printer is any good, I have heard good things about the Creality CR series, there are a few on here that have them.

I got one to do exactly this after I worked out that it would in the end be cheaper than getting it 3rd party prototyped, with all the revisions.

I've made a couple of bottle cages that sit lower (closer to the BB) so I can get a partial frame bag in.

I do have a background in CAD (2d) but that was more years ago than I care to remember! Following a thread on Pistonheads, Onshape came highly recommended as the basic use of it is free and its all web based, plus there are some very good tutorials on Youtube to get you started.

My printer is a Prusa I3 clone and IIRC cost £170 from Amazon as a kit, which was easy to put together, but I did have a few teething problems with voltages to the extruder motor that required a fair bit of electronics diagnostics (turned out it was under powered) to getting working reliably.

One thing I will stress, is don't expect to much from a cheap one, the results are not as good as the very expensive printers out there, so where you see stuff that is perfectly smooth and looks very pro, will not have been printed on a cheap kit, but if you can live with that, then you can make pretty functional items.

I've looked a bit more into this software that is included with this printer and it allows you import pre-created files as well as design them and it slices as well as controls all of the printer settings which if I understand correctly does away with having to use 2 sets of software right (a design software and a printer driver software)?

I might take the plunge with this, it allows you to printwith a resolution as fine as 0.05mm which if i understand correctly won't be as smooth as something that is injected moulded but it will be good for prototyping yes?

Obviously there will be a time penalty on prints as well, I am right in thinking better resolution = longer print time? How much time longer a print will take we will have to see.

There's a long-running thread with loads of bits and bobs in it:
http://singletrackworld.com/forum/topic/cheap-3d-printer-kits-experiences

Mate of mine bought a printer priced at £700 or so. He made me a few bits and pieces but the quality was some way short of shop gear. Yes you can do it. Yes you can make decent bits of kit, but if you want to sell them then you will have to up the quality of your machine in order to get saleable quality items out of it. There's a world of difference between what is acceptable from a mate in exchange for a beer or two and what you hope to sell for customers' hard earned cash.

The 0.05mm is the layer height and printing at that resolution will take ages. It will take twice as long as 0.1mm height, which is generally fine for most things with fine details. 0.2mm height will be 4 times faster than 0.05mm height. Remember the width of the nozzle will always be 0.4/0.5mm

You are correct it does have an all in one bit of software.. When has an all in one ever been better than specific programs/devices. Most of these bits of software are free, so it's not like you are paying for 2 bits of specific software.

The best way to learn all this is to buy a printer.

I own a printer and have another on the way. If I was to do it all again I'd just get a professional third party to do the printing, they can do better quality and in a much wider range of materials and colours plus they'll advise you on the best way of modeling stuff ready for printing.

 If I was to do it all again I’d just get a professional third party to do the printing

There are a few good subcontractors out there which can do plastics in FDM, SLS, SLA etc and metallics in SLM or DMLS. Have a look at 3TRPD or CRDM, they're the ones we use for production parts, at work. 3TRPD have an online quoting tool so you can upload your part file and it'll tell you how much it'll cost. SLM and DMLS are expensive.

At work we've got a Stratasys Dimension Elite which I might use for homers, very occasionally :o)

I just use the one down the road whenever I want something other than pla

I recently picked up an ex-demo Createbot Mini printer, from an outlet store on eBay.

Most prints so far have just been dummy objects to get the settings dialled in, but I did manage to print a drilling guide and hose guide to convert my frame to a stealth dropper. Took about an hour, was pretty happy as it did the job.

Overall though I don't think I'll be making anything of any great quality or strength on cheap printers like these.

I'd download FreeCAD or the free version of autodesk (just tick the student box, your self teaching yourself to cad if that helps your conscience).

Printing is relatively easy. Don't get distracted by that, you don't need to be Picasso to hit print on a  HP do you?

99% of the difficulty is in learning how to measure and reverse engineer components and rationalise ideas and shapes you have in your head into objects you can describe mathematically on screen. All you have to bear in mind is whatever you design can't have sharp overhangs, most printers will only go out at about 45deg, but you can print multiple parts that click together and don't have to print the right way up.