\n\tRenishaw, U.K., has collaborated with a leading British bicycle design and manufacturing company to create the world’s first 3D printed metal bike frame. During the build process, a high-power ytterbium fiber laser selectively fused particles of a titanium alloy powder. Combining layer upon layer formed the finished 3D printed bike frame sections, which were then bonded together to make the frame.<\/p>\n
\n\tEmpire Cycles designed the mountain bike to take advantage of Renishaw’s additive manufacturing technology, allowing them to create a titanium frame that would be both strong and light via topological optimization. The new frame is some 33% lighter than the original aluminum version.<\/p>\n
\n\tTitanium alloys have a high ultimate tensile strength (UTS) of more than 900 MPa when processed by additive manufacturing, and near perfect density of greater than 99.7%. This is better than casting and, as any porosity is both small and spherical, it has little effect on strength.<\/p>\n
\n\tThe project’s aim is to produce a fully functioning bicycle, so the seat post bracket was tested using the mountain bike standard EN 14766; it withstood 50,000 cycles of 1200 N. Testing continued to six times the standard without failure. The original aluminum alloy seat post bracket is 360 g and the hollow titanium version is 200 g, a weight saving of 44%. Renishaw originally agreed to optimize and manufacture the seat post bracket only, but after this proved successful, decided the whole frame was a practical goal.<\/p>\n
\n\tTesting of the completed bicycle frame will continue, both in the laboratory using Bureau Veritas UK, and on the mountainside using portable sensors in partnership with Swansea University.<\/span><\/p>\n \n\twww.renishaw.com <\/p>\n \n\t <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Renishaw, U.K., has collaborated with a leading British bicycle design and manufacturing company to create the world’s first 3D printed metal bike frame.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":63082,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[439,440,441,1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-9360","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-general","category-news","category-news-articles","category-uncategorized"],"yoast_head":"\n