3D Printed Bicycle From Stainless Steel!

You wouldn’t 3D print a car, would you? That’d simply be impractical. However, if you’re a team of students attending the Delft University of Technology (TU Delft) in the Netherlands, you might be inclined to 3D print a stainless steel bicycle instead.

The TU Delft team collaborated with MX3D, a company that uses an articulated industrial robot arm with a welder for an effector, welding and building the Arc Bicycle, glob by molten glob. Printed in chunks, this process allows the practical construction of larger objects that are able to withstand the stresses and forces of everyday use. Weighing around 20kg, you might not want to spend much time carrying it up to an apartment anytime soon, so stick to the cobblestone streets — the Arc Bicycle can take it.

The TU Delft team believes Arc Bicycle to be the world’s first 3D Printed bicycle — even though it’s technically only the frame. If this story has you wishing you could flee the winter and hop on your bike, a DIY indoor bike trainer might cure that ailment, if you can resist turning the wheel into a bow.

[Thanks for the tip, Itay!]

44 thoughts on “3D Printed Bicycle From Stainless Steel!

    1. What does this bullshit here? If somebody steals a car, a TV or any other physical object, the former owner does not have it anymore, can not use it any more. If I download a movie, I just create another copy, I do not remove the source from the server.

    1. No kidding! And cracks there will be, this process has no control over the grain and crystal structures of the deposited material, furthermore these will change unpredictably over time as it ages. I also do not see any mention of controlling hydrogen uptake, or stress relief steps, although one would assume that these were addressed at a minimum.

    1. The dutch don’t use hand brakes, they also don’t use derailleurs. Most bikes here a back pedal break and if they are geared, they are hub geared. Many (most?) also have front hub dynamos for the headlight.

      1. What a waste of energy! Your body needs energy also to produce braking force. I can not understand this hype around fixie bikes. We could discuss about single speed, if you really want to go minimalistic, but freewheel and brakes are in my opinion as optional as using pneumatic tires instead of wood or stone discs.

    1. It would also be more neat is they had a robot grab a bar and bend it then have it hand it to another robot who added it to the puzzle.
      And of course you could always put the second robot a few kilometers away and have a drone fly the bar to it, to maintain the ‘cool & modern’ angle.

      1. That sounds actually nice. A model is split in a trellis like structure: a cutter just cut it to length, without bending it; a robot grabs it and add it to the model in the right position, melting the end of it with a high current. I must put it on my “I will never have time to make it” list.

  1. “Weighing around 20kg, you might not want to spend much time carrying it up to an apartment anytime soon, so stick to the cobblestone streets — the Arc Bicycle can take it.”

    If it’s so sturdy, why not make it lighter ?

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