- Now, earlier this year, you may well remember
that I competed in the Norseman Xtreme Triathlon.
Now, personally I knew this was going to be
a pretty epic day out,
given that it is one of the toughest events in the world,
and you definitely want to see it
and see me suffering.
So given that I was going to be on the bike
for a good five to six hours,
I knew that I needed to attach a GoPro to my bike
in order to capture everything I could.
Now obviously I could just attach that GoPro
using a standard GoPro mount onto my aero bars,
but I'm pretty picky.
I like my cockpit nice and clean,
and I've already got my bike computer on there.
So, I came up with the idea of designing
a new computer mount with the GoPro attachment underneath.
Now this just means
that I'm going to have to have a custom design
for me for this setup,
with a computer and a GoPro mount underneath,
all designed for my bars
and how I've got them angled.
Now, go back a number of years,
this would be totally unfeasible, cost a fortune,
and just not be possible.
But now, with thanks to 3D printing,
I was just able to contact Martyn from RaceWare,
get this basically brought to life,
and within a handful of days, he'd made this for me,
and I used this in Norseman to capture this footage
on screen right now.
Now, in addition to this,
3D printing has totally revolutionized cycling,
in fact, sport in general.
So today, I thought we'd head along
to see Martyn at RaceWare,
and find out a little bit more about it.
(tires rumbling) (relaxing music)
(logo whirring)
Okay, we've just arrived in Newbury, home to RaceWare.
But before we head on in to meet Martyn,
let me just get you up to speed
with exactly what 3D printing is.
Now, traditionally if you wanted a part or a product made,
then a company would need to make molds and tools
for each of the individual parts for that product.
Now, that obviously takes time,
but also costs them quite a lot of money.
So they want to recoup those costs,
so they want to make sure that product is needed,
it's desirable, and it can be mass produced
to sell and make back those costs.
That's not going to bode too well for my custom mount
that's being designed for me, for my needs,
and for my setup on my bike.
But that is where 3D printing does come in.
Now, back in 1986,
there was actually a chap called Chuck Hull,
who came up with the idea
of layering inks on top of each other
to create a three-dimensional model, 3D printing.
Now, the processes,
the materials have changed somewhat since 1986,
the fundamentals remain the same.
The key being that we don't need these tools or these molds
to create the product.
So this has made way for small runs of products,
maybe even a one-off product or a prototype,
such as my mount.
So, let's head on in to see how it's made.
(upbeat music)
Hi, Martyn.
Now Martyn is the founder of RaceWare components,
and we've actually, well, we haven't come into RaceWare,
we've actually gone next door to 3T-am.
So, talk us through why we're in the premises
next door to RaceWare?
- So, 3T-am are one of the world's
leading active manufacturing bureaus,
have been around for 20 years now,
and are really at the forefront of their technology.
So, it's not by chance that my office is next door.
These guys for me were the main people to come to
for producing the components,
and the relationship works really well,
being so close geographically
means I can get my parts quicker as well.
Any problems, they're right next door to me,
so it works very very well having them as my rider.
- Yeah, and it's these machines
behind us that you're utilizing,
and we're here to talk about today.
- That's correct, yeah.
So all these machines here are 3D printing machines
building in nylon material,
and the one behind me
is actually running one of your components at the moment.
- Cool, so how do they actually work?
So what is the process involved?
- So, it's a layer based process,
and these industrial printers
are very different to the home ones,
in as much as they're done by heat and lasers,
and you have a bed of loose nylon powder,
and the layers are reduced to locally melt
the 2D contour of the component,
then that component is dropped down
by .12 millimeters of a layer,
layers in this process, not always .12,
but in this case it is.
And then, new powder is drawn across the top,
and then another layer is printed,
and it's repeated until you get the component built.
- And you can do just small runs on here I guess,
so it's maybe one product? - Yeah, you can.
Yeah, you can do one-offs, you can a hundred-off.
Generally you'd tend to do a large run
because it's economically not very viable
to do just a one-off part,
but you could do a one-off part.
- Say, for instance, we were going in the wind tunnel,
we were doing some aerodynamic testing.
You could literally make a few iterations,
pop back in, redesign, change it--
- Yeah, exactly.
- So yeah.
- Yeah, so there's no tooling,
and there's no kind of upfront costs for a one-off,
as opposed to a 10-off.
So, yeah, you can do various iterations,
and they'll be the same kind of price each time.
- Yeah, which is amazing,
because I guess traditionally
you'd be kind of waiting for months,
maybe years, for tooling,
then the production model,
whereas you can just turn it around quickly.
- Exactly. - But not just prototypes,
these are finished products that you can use,
going to world pro-tour teams,
and they are literally using them
in the likes of Paris-Roubaix,
which is like the harshest environment I guess.
- It is, yeah,
and generally the feedback is very good.
So we like to try and make sure that our parts
are functioning right at that top level.
(uplifting music)
- So whilst we leave the machines to do their thing,
we're going to head back over to Martyn's office
to find out a little bit more
about the initial stages to the 3D printing process.
- So on the screen behind, we have the CAD model
for a mount we were looking at on your bike,
and that's the start of the process.
The CAD design is the first place.
After you've done the CAD modeling,
that'll be sent to a 3D printing bureau such as 3T-am,
and they would then prep that ready for build.
So it would be put onto a theoretical build platform,
and there'd also be some scaling applied for shrinkage,
and then that scaled file would be sliced into the layers
and sent as a package of eight
to the machine ready for printing.
- With other products? - Exactly, yeah.
So you would rarely print something on its own.
It would be with a vast array of other products,
probably from other customers to fill their machine.
- Or iterations, I guess?
- Or iterations, yeah, or a combination.
- Yeah, brilliant,
and I'm actually interested in sort of
the materials that you're using here,
because this is, I mean this is a tough material.
What is it?
- So that's basically a nylon 12,
and the properties for nylon 12 are really good
for most of the bike parts that we do,
and it lends itself very well.
It's quite a flexible material,
so you can make nice hinged parts for going around bars.
It's fairly soft, so it shouldn't damage any of your bars,
shouldn't scratch them,
and it also shouldn't damage any of the computers
you're putting on there,
so if anything does get damaged,
it's likely to be the cheaper mount,
rather than the expensive computer.
We can offer other nylons,
and also titanium, such as this piece,
which is a printed titanium chain catcher.
The downside with the titanium
is it's still vastly expensive,
but the options are always there.
- Great, and I mean this is not quite a finished product,
there's a couple more stages
after these come out from the 3D printer, right?
- That's right, yeah.
So, that one's a semi-finished product,
but you still have to put in some stainless bolts
and some brass-threaded inserts to clamp it all together.
- Cool, and a bit of coloring, at some point.
- Yeah, a bit of coloring.
That one's obviously black,
but we can do most colors,
and we can also do custom paint as well,
to an exact Pantone or our reference.
- Fantastic, and just lastly,
I mean, how did you get into all of this?
What was the starting point?
- So for me, I've always been a keen cyclist,
and my TC bike, I'd spend hours making it look
as nice and sleek as possible,
but the SRM mount was horrendous.
They just, nobody made one for an oval shaped bar, so...
- Oh yeah, this is it here, right?
- Exactly, that's the one there, so I used some CAD,
and got one 3D printed.
It went almost viral really on the Weight Weenies forum,
and suddenly I found hundreds of people
wanted them almost overnight.
So it went from one SRM mount to almost a business.
- Brilliant, well on that note,
shall we go and see how it's getting on?
- Certainly.
(upbeat music)
- Okay Martyn, so we've got the product out.
I mean this doesn't look quite like the finished product
so it's got some powder on it.
What's going on here?
- Yes, that's right.
So when the part is built,
it's built with powder all around it,
so when it comes out of the machine,
you have kind of this loose debris of powder
which is collected from the printing process
where you do the layer-by-layer stages,
and one you've removed it from the machine
you then have to blast this.
Blast it with air and a light media
just to remove the powder,
but making sure we don't damage the part at the same time.
No discoloration, no burning,
and then effectively that part is then finished
for all intents and purposes.
But if you want to enhance the finish,
or make it smoother and get rid of some of the build lines
which you'll see,
then you can put it through a secondary process,
where it will vibrate through a finishing process
to give that nice smooth feel to it.
- Brilliant, well we best go and pop it in there then.
- Certainly.
(relaxing music)
- So here it is, the finished 3D printed product,
which I'm honestly super grateful
and fortunate to have had made for myself.
But don't just assume that this kind of thing
is only open to the elite or the super-wealthy out there,
because this is becoming more and more readily available.
In fact, just going through
one of the triathlon transitions last year,
I saw tons of this kind of thing made for both pros
and age-groupers.
So really cool,
I hope you have enjoyed today's video.
It's been really interesting.
Perhaps there's scope for
a GTN 3D printing project in the future,
who knows?
If you've got any ideas,
drop that in the comments section below.
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