And how is that better than what exists currently?

I refuse to believe you're being anything but intentionally dense with that post.

To the original point. Comparing making useless crap that serves no purpose other than CTD to scientifically driven product development with a proven history.

Only to state, "cause I did it". C'mon.

The question as put forth requires the answer, for your own good walk away from your friends experiments.

I don't think I was ever going to go with a fork. But I like the seat bag or phone mount idea. Could make it fit my stuff perfectly

I would be very careful about knowing what you're doing for anything structural.

My 3d printed bike projects:

- home-brewed bike light
- shims for a trailer

On the back-burner:

- helmet/bar mount for another light
- sensor mount for a computer (I broke the old one by not paying attention to the sharper curve of a carbon fork)
- quick release for a trunk rack

...

Soon after making you a fork he can make you one of these:
https://mashable.com/2012/02/06/3d-printer-jawbone/

What is 3D printing good for in plastics?
Low stress, non structural pieces. Where does 3-D have a great application? Mock up.

Reality is, if sticking in the plastics family, there is no substitute for injection molding. If you need more structure, inject into the mold glass filaments to increase tensile strength. Why not make the whole thing out of glass? Weight and no ductility aka fracture resistance. Better strength to weight? Carbon fiber. Composites if trying to optimize mechanical properties like modulus of elasticity, weight and yield strength make a lot of sense. Nobody has figured out how to do this on a printer yet.

No doubt 3D printers will evolve...but bi-material aka composite printing will be very tricky technically for a balance of weight and strength in different planes.

Generally when a product is developed in CAD...a virtual 3D model, many times engineers will want some touchy-feely parts...or design studio will want to make up a representation of a topographical surface to evaluate aesthetics. This is done in clay at the design studio initially and then the surface is scanned to create the math surface. For more mundane function parts, stereo lithography is popular to create non structural models of proposed parts...either to scale or reduced size. Latter is where 3D printers will shine and replace SLA models. The public...maybe the OP falls in this camp, blindly believe that many great parts...a bike fork (shudder...lol) can be made on a 3D printer. No doubt, average Joe will buy a 3D printer and even try this. Kind of like the first guys that developed air planes who didn't quite have the right L/D equation worked out who ran their plane off the cliff in an attempt to fly. Never heard from those guys again. The Wright brothers who btw owned a bicycle shop, were a little smarter than that.

new helmet?

bar clamp kindle holder/ipad holder for when on the trainer?

perfectly shaped case for your repair kit?

brainstorming before coffee is weak at best.

good luck!

Make a streamlined tail box trunk you can mount on the rack. Or Cervelo S5-like tube shapes you can mount over your round tubes (and pay attention to the joints, it's cool the way they did those). Airfoil instrument panel if you put stuff on your handlebar, or how about clip-on aerobars? Maybe something more mundane like quick-mount fenders and maybe a chain/ring cover. Or, personally, I'd jump at the chance to 3-d print my front fairing but that's a whole nuther can of worms ...

ummm...definitely not a helmet...unless you have a 10 cent head.

In bold. Depends how much you like your face or arms and legs.

Charge Titanium dropouts.

Make a cassette!

This is the avenue I was thinking too. Simple would be ok... offset clamp to the seatpost or the rails of the seat and then just be a flat platform with indents for CO2, on the other side flat to hold a tyre and have two slots on each side to feed a velcro/elastic to keep it all together... that would be pretty slick.

Now we're talking!

Also see:


second gen VRZ lugset:

We should be using 3D printing for everything. Need a new tire or tube? Just print one. New chain or cables? Ditto. Want a cassette made from a single piece but are too cheap to buy Red? No problemo. About to go on a ride and discovered you're out of gel? Just print a few packets (the printed ones would probably taste better too). And what better way to upgrade your shifters than to just print the ones you want?

Just imagine the possibilities...

Actually I agree with you, but of all the silly things you mentioned, the one-piece "Red" cassette has some potential. Metal printing is done (one way) by laying down a layer of the metal dust and then "printing on it with a laser to fuse the dust. Then the next thin layer of dust is laid down and so on. Cassettes aren't critical parts regarding safety, and they don't require a tremendous amount of strength, just lots of abrasion resistance. A printed cassette could work, at least for a little while. I will say this: it wouldn't surprise me to learn that SRAM printed steel prototypes of the Power Dome cassette to see how it looked and worked before actually cutting any. Brilliant idea!

This could be my new sig line.

It would surprise me greatly if SRAM had that capability in house.

Really? I'm surprised you say that. A company that makes it's living from small parts design and execution. Don't know about the metal printers, but plastic ones are way down in price. Way under k$100. A bottle cap manufacturer I know has it. Why not SRAM?

It's funny. When I complain about high bike stuff pricing that seems out of line with common sense about manufacturing costs, folks pile on about all the extra costs of a major player doing business, like R&D. Now the first time I attribute an R&D capability to a big bike parts company, you tell me they probably don't have it. Gotta love the 41.

Plastic printers are not metal printers. If they have one its likely plastic. I'm a design engineer. Just speaking from my experience.

No way to know. This reference https://www.inkpal.com/ink-news/3d-pr...l-gold-copper/ says the cost to print metal is 300X plastic. I have no idea what that works out to. I was just amused about the inability to hang the cost on a big supplier of bike parts.

Metal printers are now under $1M, I'd be shocked if SRAM doesn't have one, or at least quick access to one. The cost is probably a small fraction of their overall R&D budget when you consider the full SRAM family.

3D printed metal parts have two major advantages:

1) Rapid prototype testing.
Setting up a full tooling for manufacturing is relatively complicated, and can be quite expensive initially. BMW uses 3D parts for testing certain parts without doing a full tooling setup. 3D printed metal parts are structurally indistinguishable from machined (within a few percent on mechanical properties). I'd bet SRAM uses some 3D printing for development.

2) Impossible structures.
Things like the lugs above, one piece cassettes, interlocking structures, material removal. If you want light weight, 3D printing is the way to go. Even injection modeling has limits, since the part has to be extracted from the mold.

Both have uses in the bike industry. The first just simplifies R&D, the second will take longer to develop because you need a 3D printer production line.

You seem to not understand that a "big supplier" of bike parts is still a small fish when it comes to industry in general. Metal printed parts are only so functional especially depending on what you have to test. If you want to just have a touchy feely part in your hand so you can see it plastic is the way to go. And even then depending on where you are there is likely someplace near you that will make you one off prototypes on a contract basis so you don't have to swallow the cost of your own printer.