AREVO, a Silicon Valley company redefining global composites manufacturing through digitalization, announced a partnership with boutique bike manufacturer Franco Bicycles to deliver a 3D printed, continuous carbon fiber single-piece unibody frame for a new line of eBikes Franco will sell under the “Emery” brand. The companies will showcase the new “Emery One” eBike in booth S9 at the Sea Otter Classic bicycling event in Monterey, California, April 11 – 14, during exhibition hours.
AREVO DNA technology for additive manufacturing uses patented software algorithms that enable generative design techniques, free-motion robotics for “True 3D” construction, and direct energy deposition for virtually void free construction all optimized for anisotropic composite materials.
Further a unibody bike frame construction enabled by AREVO technology is setting a benchmark in high-performance bikes. The AREVO frame is made as a single part, in contrast to current composite frames, which are made of many parts glued together. AREVO’s intelligent continuous carbon fiber placement gives the frame structural integrity and stability. Finally, the AREVO DNA AM process takes the design and final manufacture of a bike frame from 18 months to just a few days.
The frames are in production at AREVO’s multi-purpose facility in Milpitas and this achievement with the Emery One represents several breakthroughs for bicycle manufacturers. These breakthroughs include:
–True serial, volume production of AM-made composite parts that are made with thermoplastic materials, which are tougher, durable and recyclable, as compared to brittle and non-recyclable thermoset materials
–A replacement of a laborious manual process with a fully automated, “lights out” production model
–Delivering on the promise of localized manufacturing or “on-shoring,” which creates greater independence for bike brands
–A much greater “freedom of design” for bike manufacturers that creates the possibility of fully customized bikes made on an “on demand” basis, an approach AREVO calls “DESIGN. PRINT. GO.”
Renowned industrial designer Bill Stephens of StudioWest collaborated with the AREVO and Franco teams to design the Emery One bike frame.
AREVO, Inc.
www.arevo.com
Emery Bikes
www.emerybikes.com
Certainly this post is all about the process and nothing about the product. Perhaps that is OK for a design publication. But as I look at the picture I see that there is a very large bending moment at the place where the rear section joins the rest of the frame. No matter how strong the materials I would not choose to own a bike of this design. So I am wondering about how much stress analysis was done on the design. An explanation of that portion of the design would certainly be educational, letting us understand how the design was declared to be adequate in that area.
William K…large bending moments exist in many other places on a mountain bike that have been proven in the harshest riding conditions (hands on handlebars, feet on pedals, crankarms on bottom brackets, Cannondale’s Lefty fork, etc). Especially handlebars, many of which are made of carbon fiber. Even if the analysis is done correctly, tested rigorously on machines, then beat upon by hard charging test riders, you still wouldn’t own it, just because it *looks like* it would fail?