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EADS Bicycle Made of Steel-Strength Nylon
Zothecula writes "Engineers from the Bristol wing of the European Aeronautic Defence and Space Company (EADS) have announced the development of the first bicycle using Additive Layer Manufacturing (ALM) technology. The manufacturing process involves 'growing' the components from a fine nylon powder, similar in concept to 3D printing. Said to be as strong as steel, the end product is claimed to contain only a fraction of the source material used by traditional machining, and the process results in much less waste. It also has the potential to take manufacture to precisely where the component or product is needed, instead of being confined to factories often located a great distance away."
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-12664422
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The concept sounds cool until you click the link and see the picture. What a letdown. That rubber band for a bike chain is dishearting.
If there is real advantage in using this technology like this, they should build mutiple parts and assamble a real bike.
Hi [redacted],
Can you please send me an email to my work address: [redacted]. I have a number of attachments that you would probably appreciate. Just as an FYI, the bike is purely a demonstration of what you can do with 3D printing, which we call Additive Layer Manufacturing. The bike is 100% nylon plastic which (as opposed to what has been claimed by some news outlets) is strong enough to make a bike, but not as strong as steel! Obviously. The point is that with 3D printing you have almost complete design freedom in manufacturing (unrestricted by machining tools and by the high cost of tooling up in casting). In fact customisation would not add any (or very little) cost to manufactutring. Here is a link to our website & release: http://www.eads.com/eads/int/en/news/press.8d764849-d439-475b-93b3-3cc9a7d2ba20.70472f39-dd6f-4428-a792-91d82cb9791b.html
Hope this helps...
Al
To my tired old traditionalist eyes, the bike doesn't look very functional for anything. The seat is up and the handlebars are down. Does that mean it's intended for racing? Probably not. It just looks too uncomfortable for anything else. With its small wheels, it looks like something you would throw in the trunk of your car to take to the park to ride.
So they can build a bike. It would be better if they built an awesome bike that was actually good for something.
TFA says it's 65% lighter than when manufactured traditionally, but how light is that? This could be a good material for car body panels (or even structural components) if it's light, strong, affordable, rustproof, and fails safely.
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was using ALM technology 15 years ago as manager of CAD/CAE group with various metals and plastics for rapid prototyping
I recently saw a bamboo bicycle and was blown away by the look and feel. A biodegradable frame built out of material known for thousands of years to be highly durable and strong.
I don't see anything claiming that this is a new technology. Only that the technology has developed to the point where its utility is not limited to prototyping, and it's becoming viable for full-on manufacturing.
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Can you take it out of the garage in 10+ years or so. And run it down hill at 80km/h without it starts crumbling into granulate due to oxidation.
Or even worse break into long pointy sharp fragments?
the technology was not limited to prototyping 15 years ago either, it's just that beyond dozens or hundreds of parts, usually other manufacturing methods are more cost-effective. this would certainly include nylon parts
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-12664422
Did that horrible sound at the end of the video come from the bike?
"this kind of manufacturing is still incredibly slow and expensive. This is still proof of concept for consumer items"
Spoken like a non-cyclist. The most lucrative market in bicycles isn't cheap commodity bikes like Schwinns, it's in lightweight road enthusiast and racing bikes. Price isn't the determining factor, which is why bicycle companies can charge thousands for carbon fiber frames.
Besides, if adopted, economy of scale would drop price dramatically. Prototypes are always more expensive than real-world products. CINC machines used to cost millions. Now I know a guy with one in his home's garage - he machines custom CAD-designed copper evaporator heads for phase-change computer cooling units.
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There's one thing about this that nobody seems to be noticing, and that is how good this is from the perspective of companies that want to sell you more product... as opposed to you fixing your product, they'd rather you buy a new one.
Huh?
Did you read the part about how the bearings (I assume these were not made using the same process, but I am sure at some point they would be) are essentially embedded into the structure as it was built up around them? Guess what? That means you are SOL when they wear out.
Products are already manufactured and assembled often going out their way to be difficult to disassemble to discourage repairs (at least by yourself; authorized repairs require special tools, etc). Imagine the future where, these awesome items are cool to look at and cheaper than ever to design, prototype and manufacture and oh by the way they are impossible to repair unless you want to recycle the whole thing because they are built up and around other components in such a way that its not possible to disassemble at all.
Am I proposing there's some conspiracy here? of course not. But its nice and convenient for our throw away society and I am sure somebody's already realized this and is salivating at the thought of non-repairable items.
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I believe the article is trying to say that the cost of ALM is coming down while the cost of materials and transportation continues to rise. So, at some point (probably soon), the savings in materials will exceed the cost of the ALM equipment, at least for certain products.
Especially when you start talking about having generalized ALM equipment more local to you that can make whatever you need, instead of making it and shipping it great distances which costs in both energy and damage losses, not to mention turnaround times.
The difference is even greater when you want something as customizable as a bicycle, where it takes someone with specialized knowledge and tools to build one out of a bunch of different parts from a bunch of different places and get one built out and tuned for you. A bicycle is a near-perfect example of something that currently takes a long time to procure, and/or involves middlemen who have to deal with excess stock in one part or shortages in another or damage-in-transit. You tell any serious cyclist they can get an efficient bike that weighs 2/3 what their current bike weighs in an hour down at the local copy shop, they'll pay a premium for that. Tell them it can be made to their exact size and body shape, and they'll start throwing money at you in large wads.
There will always be a place for traditional manufacturing, of course, but I think as the cost of materials creeps up and ALM and 3D printer technologies get cheaper and more available and more automated, you'll find first niche products, then more common products, being created this way.
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Resin and fibers (nylon, carbon, ...).
The only news here is that process for growing from a nylon powder.
In other words, when it breaks, there's no way to fix it. And it looks like it will shatter the first time it crashes into something.
Start doing ALM with metal or carbon and I'll be impressed.
Water just replaces a bunch of volatile organic solvents used for applying the stuff. The resulting film is the same as from a non-water-borne coating.
The water-borne "Diamond Finish" product from Varathane (quite good) has been available for at least 20 years now, and not only in Canada.
Considering a bicycle company came into - and went out of - business in the late 70s with The Original Plastic Bicycle Company, with no reason to go out of business (great product, made of foamed Lexan except for the chain and the hubs) other than the unwillingness of the public to buy said product, I don't see any rosier future for this one.
It might make sense for the industry EADS is in, as maintenance of spacecraft is something very uncommon. So the question here might be, can this replace in reliability and efficiency some other materials in aerospace?
Start doing ALM with metal or carbon and I'll be impressed.
And nylon is made out of...wait for it...Carbon!
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I notice talk of "weight savings in the components" but somehow they never got around to telling me what that particular nylon bike weighs in total. That suggests, to me, that the non-component part of the bicycle (e.g., the frame) is not that light, so the entire bike's weight is not nearly so impressive.
And this would be a big deal for a commuter-style bike like that; I played with a cheap folding bike once (Craigslist, yay) on a couple of trips, and the weight was a real issue whenever I was carrying it instead of riding it. Get that bike down below 15lbs, that would be interesting. (And if they DID, and failed to mention it, get better marketing.)