More 3D Printed Parts from Raceware Direct – Titanium (!!!) Stem, Disc Wheel Covers

Does anybody know how large the largest of these 3D Titanium printers is?

How long until we start seeing full frames built in this manner? It could lead to some very very cool designs, angles and strength zones that aren’t possible with any other material or manufacturing techniques.

The machines vary in size and resolution between manufacturers. The machines we use are all made by the german company EOS and our largest machine has a build envelope of 250mm x 250mm x 300mm (X,Y,Z)

why not magnetize the who disc valve cover so it just snaps into place, instead of the bolt/nut arrangement

It will be interesting to see if “3D Printing” becomes as polarizing of an issue in the bicycle industry as MIM parts have become in the firearms industry (although the process for 3D printing in titanium seems to avoid some of the criticisms that the anti-MIM folks have raised with the MIM process).

Regardless, I find 3D printing for rapid prototyping and small-batch manufacturing a very exciting and (hopefully) disruptive technology for any number of industries.

As far a 3D printing is concerned, there are alrady people who are ‘printing’ entire houses. Built out of poured concrete via a big gantry style crane. There really wil be no end to what this technology/method can do or produce.

Will the Singularity allow me to ride my bike more or less?

I think it is unlikely that we will see tubes anytime soon due to the cost and the size of the build envelope. However, I can see more companies following Charge’s lead and producing dropouts from Titanium, these can easily be printed as hollow components and as such the price is kept down and if required each one can be unique without effecting costs.

Hi VP, no problem with the FFWD the plan is to have a complete range of covers. It just started with the Zipp model as it is the one I needed for my bike and had a few friendly testers with Zipp discs to try out the early models.

@ Steve M. … it is 3d printing in exactly the way a zcorp printer spreads powder in thin layers and then bonds with glue … in this case, the ‘glue’ is heat, but otherwise completely analogous.

One might say it was a stretch to be considered 3d printed if it was first printed in a meltavle material and then used to create a casting through traditional ‘lost wax’ techniques … but then again, it isn’t just casting either so it has to be considered something …

The 3D name comes from what you get out of the procedure, not how you “print” it. The part is 3D, hence why they call it 3D printing. At this point all 3D metal, ceramic or polymer printing is done by a “layer by layer” process.
The machine I used to work with Laser Engineer Net Shaping (LENS) had an envelope of about 12x12x12 inches. There was no thing we couldn’t do, the only thing that would stop us would be extreme angles, this was just in our case, and size. Other than that we could use any powder that we could get that had a diameter of 50-150 microns.
I don’t think we are going to see tubes from this technology. It is called rapid prototyping, but it takes a long time to make this parts. In addition they need some processing afterwards, I.e. heat treatment or sanding.
This alone would drive the cost up way too much. I am not even sure how charge bike can affor to make those dropouts and keep the cost down. I am assuming their frames are not cheap.

Could you 3D print a kind of node structure, like a brain, inside a tube section, and make the walls thinner? That would be cool.

Since we’re on the topic of 3d printing: Injured bald eagle gets new 3-D printed beak http://grist.org/list/injured-bald-eagle-gets-new-3-d-printed-beak/

@Bill – i will add side profile shots of the plugs onto the site when they go on sale. The stickers are fine but to be fair I never liked covering the hole on a £1500 wheel with a 1p sticker. However, the main reason for the covers was to hold the magnet. A lot of riders now use rear mounted speed sensors and sticking a magnet to your carbon disc is not very pretty and can easily get knocked off by the pick up sensor if it moves.