SNAPS OF THE 3D PRINTED BIKE

They have another which is being ridden down hills in Wales tomorrow, its first ride out.

It’s bonded together with 3M sticky stuff apparently, looked great.

also saw the machines that HOPE use to knock out all their stuff, incredibly quick and all completely automated,..like taking candy from babies…

Treble awesome.

Amazing work. Well done. Hats off.

Reminds me of a Kirk.

where are you?

Brilliant. Great to see developments like this being pushed forward.

it’s at MACH 2014 NEC BIRMINGHAM, last day tomorrow – fill ya boots.

Nice showcase for the technology, but who in their right mind is going to pay for that? Doesn’t look like it’s dropper friendly either.
Shame, because it looks like 100’s of hours of work has gone into it. I guess Renishaw picked up the development costs.

Blimey, thats amazeballs 😯

The back half reminds me of a Mountain Cycles San Andreas.

There is the future. goodbye welding

Love it

Two points:
1. It doesn’t look like that immediately on completion, there’s a lot of machine time and a lot of finishing work there that you don’t need on ‘traditional’ frames. Would also be interesting to see how they plan on guaranteeing that the frame is free inclusions (3d equivalent of)
2. We’ve just had more impressive stuff printed in work, but I’d have to kill you if I told you about it 😉

Wow, proper wow. I was impressed with charges ti dropouts but that’s great. Love the internal strengthening bit, very clever.

where are you?

THE FUTURE!

Though it is super mega wicked awesome, that head badge is a disaster area. Still, super mega wicked awesome.

looks like that crap metal cheap snappy tools are made of!

ha! it does look like the same metal as they use for the free bike tools you get with MBUK.

legend – Member
Two points:
1. It doesn’t look like that immediately on completion, there’s a lot of machine time and a lot of finishing work there that you don’t need on ‘traditional’ frames. Would also be interesting to see how they plan on guaranteeing that the frame is free inclusions (3d equivalent of)
2. We’ve just had more impressive stuff printed in work, but I’d have to kill you if I told you about it

Legend – Who do you work for? MTC? AMRC? Material Solutions?

It’s very impressive technology I must admit.
However, the bike is one ugly thing.The seatpost connector looks just wrong.
I do hope it won’t be snapping like the Empire downhill bikes did.

interesting use of technology, just a shame the bike is ten years out of date

The AMRC don’t have a metal printer the mercury centre had it up to last month.

The new 3d printing place on the same site is also without DLMS at this time and from what I heard direct from renishaw 3d print consistency still remains troublesome to the point they have software that checks as it builds ,kind of like live NDT

Interestingly though the new rapid prototype centre is offering 2 days free consultancy in RPT for SME’s if anyone’s interested, and no I don’t work at that site

That is the future. Print your own bike design at a booth/bikeshop.

There is the future. goodbye welding

As Doc would say

Welding?
Where we’re going we don’t need welding.

Legend – Who do you work for? MTC? AMRC? Material Solutions?

Nah, one of their customers

legend – Member
Legend – Who do you work for? MTC? AMRC? Material Solutions?
Nah, one of their customers

Gotcha – I think I might be working with some of your colleagues (by company, not division)

avdave2 – Member
As Doc would say

Welding?
Where we’re going we don’t need welding.

Technically, the larger blown powder and wire fed Additive Manufacturing systems ARE welding.

Why 3d print a bike frame? Best for products where transport costs are much higher than manufacturing cost or products that are very custom which bike frames aren’t. Good test of the tech but not ‘the future’. As they say finishing costs are high to get it looking even that ‘finished’.

It’s fascinating technology, but is it really as strong weight-for-weight? It’s basically a sintering process as far as I understand.

having had a few bits rp’d i dread to think how much that will cost!

Technically, the larger blown powder and wire fed Additive Manufacturing systems ARE welding.

Daffy are you the big kid who always used to come along and nick our ball? 🙂

bencooper – Member
It’s fascinating technology, but is it really as strong weight-for-weight? It’s basically a sintering process as far as I understand.

Not for the metallic processes; It’s full melting. In each layer or few layers, the laser/Electron Beam penetrates several layers of substrate material, creating a fully dense structure. The material quality is similar to cast materials and can be as good as wrought, particularly after heat treating and HIP.

2. We’ve just had more impressive stuff printed in work, but I’d have to kill you if I told you about it

Meh, POIDH.

😉

Interesting – it’s moved on since I last looked at it. Presumably you need to pick alloys that are happy to be remelted.

There is the future. goodbye welding

Nah, That thing will still have cost a fortune to make, the actual functional benefits are debatable…

This however is a bicycle based application that makes sense to me:

Custom lugs (the pictured ones are gold plated Stainless sttel I believe), bond in the tubes of your choice, Carbon/Steel/Ti/Al as budget and/or desired characteristics dictate, its a feasible and realisable option today…

That saddle looks a little bum numbing.

The best choice would be a hybrid approach using a 3D printer to build the custom nodes as in Cookeaa’s post and using drawn tubes, potentially with EB welding for the joints.

Tubes are remarkably optimised (load and cost) for the jobs they perform on a bike.

The new 3d printing place on the same site is also without DLMS at this time and from what I heard direct from renishaw 3d print consistency still remains troublesome to the point they have software that checks as it builds ,kind of like live NDT

Interestingly though the new rapid prototype centre is offering 2 days free consultancy in RPT for SME’s if anyone’s interested, and no I don’t work at that site

Can you please tell me who can offer this service, this process would suit something I need making, as long as it doesn’t cost 3xUS national debt!

The best choice would be a hybrid approach using a 3D printer to build the custom nodes as in Cookeaa’s post and using drawn tubes, potentially with EB welding for the joints.

Tubes are remarkably optimised (load and cost) for the jobs they perform on a bike.

Yup.

The thing I posted is perhaps an “Extreme” example but it illustrates that there are some pretty interesting options using “3D printing” in combination with other technologies…

the Empire/Renishaws project is a “Full Bunha” example of what Can be done, its still prohibitively expensive and specialised, but the technology will be used more for smaller components of all sorts in the next few years…

Frame looks like an exercise in unecessary cost and complexity to me.