The Sculpteo Bike Project is a road bike made with additive manufacturing, and its designers are currently riding it across the USA.

Using 3D printing and laser cutting technologies, a pair of industrial designers have printed and assembled a functioning road bike. Alexandre d’Orsetti and Piotr Widelka worked in tandem on the Sculpteo Bike Project, which was completed in only seven weeks.

As d’Orsetti explains:

“We started working on the bike at the beginning of November (2016). We were looking for a project that would allow us to integrate and test a wide range of the materials and processes offered by Sculpteo, in particular the latest ones like metal 3D printing via DMLS, laser cutting or Carbon’s CLIP resin 3D printing. “

An interesting angle is how the pair are testing the bike. With the dust settled after CES 2017 — where the bike was on display — d’Orsetti and Widelka are taking it on a road trip from Las Vegas to San Francisco.

The goal is to prove that their road bike is already a capable performance machine, not just a prototype. The 1000km test ride will evaluate how the bike copes in different altitudes and temperatures.

The Challenge of the Sculpteo Bike Project

For the Sculpteo Bike Project, the designers used a multitude of 3D printing technologies. These include selective laser sintering (SLS), metal 3D printing, and Carbon’s CLIP resin 3D printing. The inox, aluminium and leather components are the result of laser cutting, and the frame mounts are made with CNC milling.

d’Orsetti said:

“A bike is constituted of an ensemble of peripherics assembled around one structural element, the frame. This diversity of elements, with specific constraints (structure, comfort, settings, etc.) allowed us to split the project into several sub-projects, and to choose, for each one of them, which technology and material would fit best.”

The bike is the first demonstration from Sculpteo Studio, a new service from Sculpteo providing expertise in rapid prototyping and digital design. Sculpteo Studio will be fully integrated into their portfolio of online manufacturing services in 2017.

Interested in finding out more about the Sculpteo Bike Project? Read an interview with d’Orsetti and Widelka on Sculpteo’s blog. You can also follow their progress on Twitter with the hashtag #SculpteoBikeProject.

“According to the feedbacks we get, we’ll probably adapt the bike,” enthuses d’Orsetti. “Maybe we’ll push further some of the elements further. We’re thinking for example of solutions to make customized frames.”