Steel 3D printing from world engineering agency Renishaw helped Workforce GB win eight monitor biking medals on the 2024 Olympic Video games in Paris.
The corporate collaborated with British Biking to 3D print over 1,000 components for 32 Olympic monitor bikes utilizing its RenAM 500Q, four-laser steel 3D printer. These components included an aerodynamic crank, dropouts, seat keep bridge and seat publish. The latter was reportedly the primary 3D printed part of its variety, that includes a novel design for superior aerodynamics.
Workforce GB had initially meant to fabricate its bikes largely utilizing standard strategies. Nonetheless, time constraints imposed by the COVID-19-delayed 2020 Olympics, held in 2021, necessitated the shorter lead instances provided by additive manufacturing.
On the 2020 Tokyo Olympics, Renishaw additionally helped to provide the Nice Britain Biking Workforce’s monitor bike utilizing its RenAM 500M 3D printer.
“The carbon fibre components produced utilizing conventional machining strategies for the Tokyo bike met all the necessities we had, however time constraints for the Paris bike meant that this methodology was not viable for some bespoke components,” defined Dr Oliver Caddy, Lead Undertaking Engineer at British Biking.
“After seeing the advantages of AM and what it helped us obtain on the Tokyo bike, we knew it may very well be a producing methodology to discover additional.”
Workforce GB adopts additive manufacturing
On the 2024 Olympic Video games, Nice Britain introduced residence 65 medals, together with 11 in biking, eight of which got here from the monitor. One key spotlight was Katy Marchant, Sophie Capewell, and Emma Finucane’s gold medal and new world file within the girls’s crew dash.
British Biking’s tools and attire growth crew is accountable for growing and producing new bikes for Workforce GB and giving athletes the most effective instruments to attain success.
On the video games, the group’s bikes needed to ship most velocity, steadiness and aerodynamic efficiency. Design and manufacturing capabilities, together with steel 3D printing, had been essential in reaching this.
Because of the COVID-impacted 2020 Olympics being delayed to 2021, British Biking confronted vital stress to ship an optimized bike in time. Core elements, such because the carbon fiber crank and seat posts, had been initially developed utilizing conventional strategies corresponding to injection molding and machining. This requires the producer to first develop tooling to create the ultimate half – a time-consuming course of.
“Elements such because the crank and seat publish are customised to the rider, so we would have liked to discover a solution to develop completely different sized components rapidly, whereas additionally utilizing a way that would ship the efficiency beneficial properties required for the applying,” defined Caddy.
To attain this, the crew turned to Renishaw’s steel 3D printing expertise, which had already supported its success on the Tokyo Olympics.
3D printing permits Olympic biking success
Renishaw first 3D printed plastic prototypes of the carbon fiber components. “We knew that we needed to experiment with the British Biking crew to seek out the optimum geometries and inside buildings for these components,” commented Ben Collins, Lead Additive Manufacturing Functions Engineer at Renishaw.
After a number of rounds of prototyping and testing, they agreed on the exterior designs for the seat publish, crank, and smaller elements just like the seat bridge and dropouts. Subsequent, the components had been 3D printed in titanium.
Additive manufacturing allowed for complicated geometries which eliminated pointless weight. As an illustration, when growing the aerodynamic seat publish, engineers developed free-form geometries which hollowed out the half as a lot as attainable.
The hole centre and backwards leaning design enabled air to circulate by way of the center of the bike, optimizing its aerodynamic efficiency. Every titanium seat publish was 3D printed to the precise measurements of the person riders. In accordance with Collins, this is able to have been unimaginable utilizing conventional manufacturing strategies.
Collins additionally highlighted the worth of 3D printed lattice buildings, which allowed the crew to “obtain the identical stiffness as the unique carbon fibre components however with diminished weight.”
Often, lattices are constant in thickness all through the components. Nonetheless, for the bike’s crank, stress factors had been brought on by power and pressure utilized at completely different areas. This might have prompted the half to fail.
To beat this, Renishaw used topology optimization software program to create distinctive inside lattices that possess thicker sections at factors of excessive stress. Thinner lattices had been positioned in areas of low stress to scale back weight.
The titanium crank underwent ISO testing, guaranteeing it may face up to the extraordinary pressures of Olympic racing. Whereas normal bikes are normally examined towards 1,000 Newtons of pressure, Olympic bikes should face up to 3,000 Newtons.
“Working with Renishaw has taught us so much, not solely concerning the particular components we’re producing for Paris 2024, however about the place AM can ship essentially the most worth in several purposes and the way design influences the properties of the ultimate half,” added Caddy.
3D printed bikes
Away from British Biking, many firms have recognized the worth provided by additive manufatcring for bike manufacturing. Earlier this yr, 3D printing supplies developer Elementum 3D and German machine instrument producer TRUMPF collaborated to reinforce INTENSE Cycles‘ M1 downhill race bike.
INTENSE leveraged TRUMPF’s steel 3D printing expertise to manufacture key elements for the bike’s spine, a pivotal ingredient in enhancing suspension efficiency. The venture leveraged Elementum 3D’s A6061-RAM2 alloy. This 3D printable materials mirrors the alloy employed in INTENSE’s aluminum frames.
The fabric’s weldability and constant processability reportedly streamlined the event of 3D printing parameters. This minimized the variety of iterations wanted to realize the required relative density values.
Elsewhere, Welsh bespoke bicycle producer Atherton Bikes partnered with Renishaw to 3D print its World Cup successful bikes. The patterns first collaborated to provide 3D printed titanium lugs for the bike’s frames. 3D printed on the RenAM 500Q, the lugs had been designed to be light-weight and strong.
These 3D printing capabilities had been then introduced in-house by Atherton. This allowed clients to check their new bikes within the Welsh mountains, a brief drive from its workplace.
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Featured picture exhibits the 2024 Workforce GB Olympic monitor bike. Photograph through Renishaw.
