A student team from TU Delft has produced a bicycle with a special 3D metal printer from the MX3D company in Amsterdam. “This technology enables us to use more organic forms.”
The students designed the frame of the bicycle to demonstrate the potential of a new method for 3D printing of metal. Stef de Groot (Bachelor student at the Faculty of Industrial Design and Engineering) explained that the team analysed the initial frame form for hotspots for forces and torques. They then adapted the density or stainless steel wires at those places accordingly.
The welding robots at MX3D basically make spot welds. They produce steel wires in any form by stacking spot welds on top of each other. It’s a slow process: it took the team 100 hours to 3D print the bicycle frame. The rough unpolished form of these wires and their brownish-blue colour is characteristic of the process.
Tim Geurtjens, CTO at MX3D, underlines the flexibility of their process: “What distinguishes our technology from traditional 3D printing methods is that we work according to the ‘printing outside the box’ principle. By printing with 6-axis industrial robots, we are no longer limited to a square box in which everything happens. Printing a functional, life-size bridge is, of course, the ideal way to showcase the endless possibilities of this technique.”
“Clearly, 3D printing is not the most efficient or fastest way to make a bicycle frame”, said De Groot. “But 3D metal printing offers a totally different aesthetic, it allows designers to use much more organic forms than just plain tubes.”
De Groot regards the bicycle is a ‘proof of concept’ for the strength of 3D printed steel wire constructions. They take the fact that the special-looking bicycle is capable of withstanding a ride through the city over cobble-stoned roads as an indication for the strength of the material. The same technique will be used by MX3D to construct a bridge over a canal in the centre in Amsterdam.
The wire-frame bicycle was designed as part of a research project at the Industrial Design Engineering (IDE) faculty exploring the viability of metal 3D printing using a welding process. The printed bicycle is part of wider research being done at the Delft University of Technology and the 3D Building FieldLab.
The project was coordinated by Dr. Jouke Verlinden, principal scientist of the 3D Building FieldLab & Researcher on Human-Centered Digital Fabrication at the IDE faculty.
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