Woah this is crazy, the future is basically already here. This is the first ever mountain bike created using a 3D printer and it looks well, pretty frickin’ awesome!
The project was apparently the brainchild of the British custom bike builder Empire Cycles, 3D printing supplier, Croft Additive Manufacturing, and Honda. Hence the advert-y feel of the video. But despite that cheesy “Power of Dreams” tagline at the end, the bike itself looks seriously cool.
Of course it’s impossible to tell properly without riding it ourselves but it also looks like the MX6 Evo works pretty well too.
However, we’d imagine the grade 5 “titanium 6-4 alloy” that they’ve used for the frame doesn’t come cheap.
And while the guy from Croft is keen to reassure watchers of the video that 3D printing is “about to break into the mainstream”, for the moment at least, it can’t be the cheapest way to build a bike frame.
But who knows what might happen in future? Now that this is done, and a working prototype has been made, might we see an opening of the floodgates? Could this revolutionise the bike industry?
Imagine in the future if rather than having to wait for a bike to be delivered, you could just order it from the designer and have it printed while you wait in your local bike shop? Or even on your own 3D printer at home?
It might be of limited commercial use at the moment, but the potential for this kind of tech is huge!