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from the if-you-give-a-mouse-a-printer… dept.
There have been a number of electric motorcycles that have broken away from the traditional designs of their gas-powered brethren, including the Rocsie and Zeus. But what would happen if a moto was specifically designed for Fused Filament Fabrication printing? Germany's BigRep has debuted a number of automotive and e-mobility prototypes at this year's formnext additive manufacturing exhibition, including the world's first 3D-printed working electric motorcycle.
The 190 x 90 x 55 cm (74.8 x 35.4 x 21.6 in) Nera bike was designed by Marco Mattia Cristofori with Maximilian Sedlak from the company's Nowlab innovation consultancy and printed on BigRep's own large-scale 3D printers using ProHT, ProFLEX, PETH and PLA filaments through a 0.6 - 1 mm nozzle at a layer height of 0.4 - 0.6 mm.
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Everything except the electrical components has been produced on a 3D printer – that includes the tires (with custom tread), rhomboid wheel rims, frame, fork and seat. The Nera bike also rocks flexible bumpers to replace the traditional suspension found in other motos.
Custom-printed electric motorcycles, but will they ever be allowed on the road?
(Score: 2) by VLM on Wednesday November 21 2018, @01:51PM
I fooled around with a printrbot for some years, still have it, although the company has gone out of business. Its fun, however it doesn't eliminate problems so much as shift them.
First of all, getting good prints is a craft, like basement woodworking. Yes there are people making attractive art in their basements out of wood and PLA prints, but the majority of amateur projects are very "hold my beer and watch this" and they look and perform as you'd expect. Now if you're making a bookcase or printing semi-illegal warhammer mini figures then crap product doesn't work but I wouldn't risk my life on the streets in something without being very certain of it.
The problem with 3D printing is you replace a building full of subtractive machining heavy cast iron metalworking gear with an equally if not more complicated room of jigs and fixtures to verify print quality. And my experience making holding fixtures and jigs and the like using PLA is its too weak for the task, so you need a room of steel to Q+A your PLA prints so F it make stuff out of metal and wood and skip the printer.
The biggest problem with 3d prints is unlike steel its not homogeneous and under failure (intentional testing or operational...) it delaminates and cracks along planes and is generally untrustworthy crap. 3D printing is limited to stuff where its either a gimmick or its not safety critical like coathooks or toys or art.
Ironically the disaster is the machines are perfectly usable for irrelevant stuff but the market is going to get killed by people insisting they can 3-d print seatbelts and heart surgery equipment that fails and makes the whole industry look bad even the mere art printers.
3D printing is fun, its just not very useful. And there's nothing wrong with entertainment until people confuse entertainment with safety critical hardware, LOL.