P U B L I S H E R ’ S D E S K
END USER:
CUSTOMISED
IS NOW KING
ADDITIVE MANUFACTURING ALLOWS BIKE MANUFACTURER TO
EXTEND CUSTOMISATION OPTIONS TO ITS CUSTOMERS
If there’s something you can be certain of – along with
death and taxes – it’s that change is inevitable and
constant.
In the world of manufactured products, the end user is
getting a heck of a lot more discerning and wanting to
stand out from the crowd – customisation of products
is now where it’s at with companies such as Oakley,
a sunglass maker, now offering entire processes so a
customer can completely build their own sunglasses.
In a crowded marketplace, people are wanting differentiation.
But it’s not stopping there.
Global engineering technologies company, Renishaw,
has supplied Bastion Cycles with an AM250 system to
improve its in-house additive manufacturing (AM) capabilities.
The Australian bike manufacturer has used the
machine to allow customers to completely customise
their bike frames and follow the production process
from beginning to end.
Bastion Cycles design, develop, trial and market a
high-performance road bike which utilises a modular
design of AM titanium lugs, paired with filament wound
carbon fibre tubes. It prides itself on building premium
bike frames locally in Australia using the latest technologies
and materials. The company originally outsourced
some of the production process to a local AM bureau,
which produced the titanium lugs for its bike frames.
However, as sales and demand increased, the company
decided to bring the AM process in-house.
Ben Schultz, James Woolcock and Dean McGeary,
the founders of Bastion Cycles met with Mike Brown,
general manager at Renishaw Oceania, based near
Melbourne, to find out about the Renishaw AM
system. Bastion Cycles tested this and three other
machines from various suppliers but found that the
AM250 produced the best surface finish, material
performance and mass customisation capabilities.
The titanium lugs, printed on the AM system are
unique to Bastion Cycles in their exploitation of very
thin-walls, outer-skins and a structural internal lattice,
resulting in an extremely high stiffness-to-weight AM
part.
“Additive manufacturing is the secret to the customisation
and performance of our bikes,” explained Mr
Schultz, managing director at Bastion Cycles. “With
the help of Renishaw’s technology, we were the first
company in the world to design, develop, test and
market a commercially viable, high performance road
bicycle using additive manufacturing, something that
we are very proud of.”
For the first three years of operation, Bastion Cycles
outsourced production to RAM3D, an AM bureau,
located in Tauranga, New Zealand. RAM3D also
utilised the Renishaw AM250 platform to manufacture
the titanium components of the bike frame to Bastion’s
supplied design. At the end of 2018, the decision
was made by Bastion Cycles to bring the AM process
in-house.
“We chose Renishaw to supply an AM system
because of the support it could provide,” continued
Schultz. “Australia has a fairly small AM market and
Renishaw is the only company with a local headquarters
with dedicated staff that could get an engineer to
our site in a few hours. That is a valuable service for a
small business like us,” adds Mr Schultz.
“AM technology means we can design and
manufacture parts that could not be produced using
traditional bike manufacturing methods,” explained
Mike Brown, General Manager at Renishaw Oceania.
“By using the AM system, Bastion Cycles is able to
design, prototype and produce high-performance
titanium lugs for its frames and meet the demand of its
customers.”
Greg Robertson
Publisher
HALTER LoadAssistant®
DISCOVER THE SIMPLICITY
Easy to move from one CNC machine
to another
No robotics experience required
Unique benefi ts of the HALTER LoadAssistant:
Complete plug-and-play solution for every
brand of CNC machine, new or existing
Set-up in less than 5 minutes
Please contact us for more information or to request for a workshop, we are happy to advise you!
HALTER Technology Center - New Zealand
T 07 282 7930 • h.glerum@haltercnc.com • www.haltercncautomation.com
A 3D printed part
- titanium lug
Reliable technology
Payback period of 6-18 months
Local support of the HALTER-team
REN286
• FULL NZ SALES AND SERVICE SUPPORT
• IN STOCK FOR IMMEDIATE DELIVERY
• FIRST THREE ALREADY SOLD
www.engineeringnews.co.nz 3
/www.haltercncautomation.com
/www.engineeringnews.co.nz
link