3D printed titanium parts

[alaskun]

I can't wait to see how ugly the first printed asian flatland frames are...

http://www.rntbike.com/
http://reviews.mtbr.com/interbike-road-not-taken-flex-fit-108-flat-pedal-with-float/rnt-foil-tape
http://www.pinkbike.com/news/interbike-2014-tech-fest-special-nerd-worshippers-edition.html

Road Not Taken is a South Korea based start-up company that manufactures simple products that are beautifully crafted and engineered. Their titanium hardtail fame is pieced together using printed lugs, brazed to ultra-strong 6-4 alloy tubes, using a material that has only been available to the public for three years. Amorphous titanium   - http://spinoff.nasa.gov/Spinoff2004/ch_7.html -  has no grain structure, as most people understand it, and thus becomes almost as viscous as water when it liquefies. RNT wraps a thin ribbon of amorphous titanium around the tubes at each junction and then heats the frame in a vacuum oven until the ribbon melts and bonds the tubes to the lugs. The result is a one-piece titanium structure. I read about amorphous metal a few years ago when The Wall Street Journal announced that Apple had purchased the rights to use the patented process from Liquid Metal - but until Interbike, I had never touched the stuff.

[alaskun]

these...



make me think of printing mini primo tenderizers or snafu pedals...

http://ipmsuk.proboards.com/thread/8038

Post by joe on Apr 15, 2011


heres some updates...

the pedals were done as a 3d print. i drew them in vector 3d and then stuck them in with some other stuff we were doing at work so didnt cost me a penny

heres a pic of ther two halves bofore i moulded them, the tape is where you cut to on the mould to create a split line. each half in the pic is one left and one right. then i cast it twice and stuck two together. dunno if thats easy to understand but for example, the one on the right in the first pic is the right peddle and another one exactly the same will fit onto it to create the whole right peddle.





heres two the same after i cast them to make a whole pedal.



the pedal was grief to work out how to make cos i couldnt really do it on the mill as there are so many weird undercuts and stuff. so even a 3d print had to be done as only a half cos of the way it works, it needs to have a bottom where i gets printed from which wouldnt have worked to do it as a whole pedal.

some more pics







heres some pics with colour on them. I used the steel pins that I had from the chain and the smaller pins in the middle are plastic. First I painted them silver then sprayed them with lacquer with orange ink in it and they looked pretty good but I couldnt get the gold to look even cos where more paint was the colour was much darker. I was trying to achieve the plasti-coated look they have. Anyway, I wasn't happy so I stripped them in thinners and mixed up some gold paint and used some of the same orange ink with it then clear lacquered them afterwards.

Heres the result, pretty good i think.



Read more: http://ipmsuk.proboards.com/thread/8038#ixzz3LyBkxk8W

[alaskun]

I can't work out how they ano'd it

http://pencerw.com/feed?tag=topper
http://www.bikerumor.com/2014/12/11/3d-printed-titanium-seatmast-topper-coming-from-designer-spencer-wright/
http://pencerw.com/topper

[alaskun]

Weld3D working on development of low cost 3D metal printing

http://www.3ders.org/articles/20141030-weld3d-working-on-development-of-low-cost-3d-metal-printing.html
http://www.weld3d.com/
http://www.3ders.org/articles/20141211-michigan-tech-developed-cheap-and-easy-post-printing-techniques-for-metal-objects.html

Oct. 30, 2014




Metal printing has developed further in the past 10 years, and more and more investors and analyst have shown interests in metal 3D printing. 3D printing for direct metal part manufacturing could lead to cost saving and better performing components. Unfortunately, the price of commercial metal 3D printers are so expensive and it remained out of reach of most people.

One startup, Huntsville, Alabama based Weld3D wants to make 3D metal printing affordable. Weld3D, a team of aerospace engineers started development of their idea and process about a year ago. "Weld3D all started out with a couple curious aerospace engineers working in the garage on the nights and weekends." Paul from Weld3D told us.

"We were frustrated with the lack of parts and process development that people were showing and knew we had more information to offer on our builds. That is when we seriously started working on Weld3D and getting some of our information out there."

The original intent was just to see if we could achieve low cost metal printing." Paul said. "We follow the industry trends and are aware of all the high end metal printing work being completed; we are also aware of the researchers and startups showing some of their developments."

The starup has been working on development of a process that produces basic and complex parts from metal (Model to Metal), and have printed dozen of parts in metal.

"It still has some minor tweaks, but overall we have been able to make complex parts and geometries in an evening (for most builds)." Paul told us. "We recently completed some mechanical property testing of our process and will release those results soon. We are using an arc welder, but have notebooks full of ideas for other related processes."

They plan to use capital raised from the initial products to fund some of their more advanced ideas that all involved low cost 3D printing with metal.

"Initially, we are looking to get our process out to market to adapt to existing personal CNC machines. This will reduce the barriers and cost to entry." Paul said. "We continue our development process with different alloys ...so our customers will have access to reliable parameters using the Weld3D process. We are also currently in talks with some suppliers about building custom machines for a complete plug and play system."

The team is stil working on the details so there is no price data available yet. But the company assures us that they will be of great value to hobbyist and commercial customers.

Weld3D is currently looking for commercial and university partnerships as well as software partners. Over the coming months they will be releasing more data of the process, photos, and products so people can make their own metal 3D prints. Stay tuned, we'll keep you updated as soon as we learn more about it.


http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wOarxQRKW9o

from 2013...

[alaskun]

CeramicSpeed debuts £660 derailleur pulleys at NAHBS  - 3D-printed titanium with novel hollow cross-section

Just when you thought boutique bicycle components couldn’t get any pricier, Danish company CeramicSpeed has gone and utterly shattered the glass ceiling with a pair of outrageously expensive titanium derailleur pulleys developed in collaboration with the Danish Technological Institute. The price tag is a whopping US$1,000 (£660) – but hey, at least you get two.

CeramicSpeed builds the pulleys using a 3D printer, which allows for a hollow structure that otherwise wouldn’t be possible with conventional manufacturing techniques. In addition to supposedly being lighter than CeramicSpeed’s standard aluminium or titanium pulleys – saving a whopping 2g or so – the company also claimed a three-fold increase in durability...

how long until something like this...

[Sasper]

ohmahhgaaawdd ( spelling? )  that RNC picture is so good. reminds me of great times in bmx!

[torontoflatlander]

ohmahhgaaawdd ( spelling? )  that RNC picture is so good. reminds me of great times in bmx!

I sold mine to Laz. I want that sprocket back! $20

[alaskun]

I just offered him $175 for it the other day and he turned me down 





Pretty good reading here...

http://3dprintingindustry.com/2015/03/10/3d-printing-titanium-the-bin-of-broken-dreams-part-1/
http://3dprintingindustry.com/2015/03/11/3d-printing-titanium-the-bin-of-broken-dreams-part-2/
http://3dprintingindustry.com/2015/03/12/3d-printing-titanium-the-bin-of-broken-dreams-part-3/

...I visited MicroTek Finishing — a major player in the metal 3D printing world. While there, I spoke with Tim Bell, who related an anecdote about his time at Morris Technologies, the aerospace 3D printing giant that was acquired by GE in 2012. Tim was a product development leader at Morris, and he talked of a large bin that they had in their shop. It was called the “Bin of Broken Dreams”, and into it went an endless stream of failed parts.

My part has now been printed in six different build configurations. We (and, by we, I mean Dave Bartosik, whose creativity and enthusiasm for getting the build to work was inspiring) added solid supports in a number of places, chasing built-in stresses around the part with each iteration. The latest prototype, although nonfunctional, is nevertheless a big improvement on the earlier builds — and the process has taught us a lot about the idiosyncrasies of my design.

...

Build 3

Build 3. The saddle clamp and bolt boss are both anchored, but the center of the part lifted.

Build 4

Build 4, heat treated & wire EDM’d off of the build plate. The bottom of the part is distorted & lifted. The purple color comes from the heat treatment process.

...

Build 6

Build 6. The part is basically round, but has a bulge in the middle of the seatmast clamp.



Build 6, with the bulge clearly visible on the bottom edge.

Throughout each of these builds, three things have remained consistent. First, the surface finish on the exterior of the part leaves much to be desired; it will definitely need to be finished in a separate step. Second, the surfaces that needed to be EDM cut from their solid supports (the saddle clamp and the bolt boss) are irregular, and will need to be smoothed into the rest of the part. Third, the internal diameters will almost definitely need to be post-processed by machining or EDM — even the saddle clamp, which, overall, had a passable surface finish, was undersized by .020″ — about four times the desired variance.

The net effect is that after six build iterations — each of which took almost two full days to set up, build, stress-relieve, and cut off of the build plate — we still don’t have a functional prototype to test...

older stuff...











Flying Machine?
bike in background looks like one of theirs, and it's australia http://www.bikerumor.com/2014/07/31/flying-machine-sharpens-3d-printing-offers-f-one-hd-with-invisible-titanium-lugs/



some sort of pitbull-style brake? aside from the arms, I have no idea what I'm looking at...
 




http://www.crpmeccanica.eu/
http://www.designfax.net/news/stories/feature-6.asp
http://www.productionmachining.com/articles/direct-metal-laser-sintering

This titanium structure for a brake on a competition bicycle is hollow, improving performance and reducing weight. Production with DMLS took 11 hours, a significant cost and time reduction compared with casting.

[alaskun]

http://www.slideshare.net/AltairHTC/riding-into-the-future-3d-printed-bike

Here is a new "Lumberjack Slam" handlebar...it's 9" X 32" and the same weight as a normal Slam XLT thanks to our new "Honeycomb" crossbar design. We are also working a a whole frame with this new 4Q Baked tube set. Stay tuned...we'll have it at Interbike.

Ultralight 3D-printed beams could bear heavy loads

[alaskun]

"Fooly's Major Glory"

http://forums.mtbr.com/frame-building/foolys-major-glory-822434-post10669926.html#post10669926

 09-10-2013

 The linkage is DMLS (direct metal laser sintering), 6/4 titanium and its hollow! I was originally looking at doing an investment casting. However for just one part no one wanted to switch over to the high quality metal, and to make the bearing holes required secondary machining. Next I considered having the part CNC'ed, the cost was lower than having an investment cast plus the secondary machining.

I was working with a local prototype shop who specialize in small run stuff. But the salesman kept pushing to run this part on his new 3d printer. I had made parts in SLA (stereolathagrophy) and SLS (selective laser sintering) before for my regular job. But I absolute didn't want this part in plastic, no matter how good the process has improved since my last few time I had made some parts.

But this got me thinking, has SLA/SLS improved enough to start making parts in metal? After doing some research, indeed they do! And in Titanium! I was sold, I redesigned the linkage to take full advantage of the DMLS process. And there it is!

[blueee]

I sold mine to Laz. I want that sprocket back! $20

we used that sprocket to anihlate a segway, ground was too sandy to bunnyhop so i just threw his bike at it as hard as i could, lol

[alaskun]

from 2012; apparently this was his second set, but I don't feel like trying to find pictures of the others right now. 

Laser Sintered Bicycle Crankset

This is an incredibly interesting post about a laser-sintered crankset. New methods & technologies are allowing us to manufacture quicker and easier than ever before!

(Translated from German to English)
https://translate.google.com/translate?sl=auto&tl=en&js=y&prev=_t&hl=en&ie=UTF-8&u=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.light-bikes.de%2Fforum%2Fshowthread.php%3Ft%3D19755&edit-text=&act=url

beefier splined/pinchbolted set

[G]

from 2012; apparently this was his second set, but I don't feel like trying to find pictures of the others right now. 

Laser Sintered Bicycle Crankset

This is an incredibly interesting post about a laser-sintered crankset. New methods & technologies are allowing us to manufacture quicker and easier than ever before!

(Translated from German to English)
https://translate.google.com/translate?sl=auto&tl=en&js=y&prev=_t&hl=en&ie=UTF-8&u=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.light-bikes.de%2Fforum%2Fshowthread.php%3Ft%3D19755&edit-text=&act=url

beefier splined/pinchbolted set

All that thought and effort to use a square taper still?!?!?


G.

[torontoflatlander]

All that thought and effort to use a square taper still?!?!?


G.

Oh god, my sides. I'm dying.

[alaskun]

http://29in.ch/post/1053995422/crankset-done-by-3d-laser-beam-melting-the-neo

 The neo crankset was manufactured through 3D laser beam melting (also known as selective laser sintering) to achieve a feather-weight set of merely 220 grams. Selective laser sintering (SLS) is a manufacturing technique...

http://www.fastcoexist.com/3033224/the-ultimate-urban-utility-bike/building-a-better-bike-frame#5