3D printed titanium in the Olympics

Chalo

Chalo

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https://3dprinting.com/news/3d-printed-handlebar-fails-during-olympic-race/

This was a handlebar 3D printed from titanium. It's a great illustration of the problems with 3D printing for structural applications. A wrought Ti bar would never have failed in this way, because it wouldn't be full of bubbles, blobs and crap due to the manufacturing process.
 
3D printing/additive metals is still in its infancy. Controlling heat, time and thermal expansion still has so much open to develop. We've only recently (3 years) cracked the code to Aluminum Nucleation issues.
 
The Madison is crazy and scary enough without this happening. Hopefully they are using a much more sophisticated technology than typical FDM printing. One of the big problems with that is the orientation of the layers. If you print with the layers in the wrong orientation to the forces the parts will break much more easily than otherwise.
 
raylo32 said:
Hopefully they are using a much more sophisticated technology than typical FDM printing. One of the big problems with that is the orientation of the layers. If you print with the layers in the wrong orientation to the forces the parts will break much more easily than otherwise.
Click to expand...

Yeah, but that's not the main problem. The main problem is that they're making a welded structure out of only weld.
 
Chalo said:
https://3dprinting.com/news/3d-printed-handlebar-fails-during-olympic-race/

This was a handlebar 3D printed from titanium. It's a great illustration of the problems with 3D printing for structural applications. A wrought Ti bar would never have failed in this upsers way, because it wouldn't be full of bubbles, blobs and crap due to the manufacturing process.
Click to expand...

Massive tarnish on the brand (though I still dream of getting one, one day). Sad thing is the impact on the team that I presume, thought they were in with a chance of a medal
 
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