Keep a Comment
This years’ Olympics in Tokyo have seen a boom in 3D printed shoe employed over a variety of competitions.
Cyclists specifically have been making utilization of AM systems bringing various AM goods to the track ranging from 3D printed cranks to lugs to handlebars.
Given the increase in AM equipment in this years’ competition, it had been perhaps inevitable that people see the initial AM part are unsuccessful during an Olympic function. And that is accurately what occurred when the 3D published handlebars of Australian cyclist Alex Porter snapped away through the men’s pursuit qualifiers on Mon 2nd August.
You can view what that looked like in the graphic below. Take note the failed handlebars in the most notable remaining corner of the picture.
Thankfully nobody was severely injured, preserve for a few grazes and scrapes to the rider, which is remarkable in itself when you consider he struck the deck face-initial at 65 km per hour.
Under the “recognized mishap” guideline, the team is allowed a restart if there is an unavoidable mishap which stops the competition, hence the Australian team quickly signalled that they wanted a second attempt.
With just 30 minutes to recover from the face-plant, the Australian workforce had taken that second attempt, and emerged in 5th place with 1st likely to the Danish crew. This implies Australia will be competing for Bronze in the ultimate of this event.
The so-referred to as “Madison handlebars” (pictured below) were made by Australian cycle organization Bastion, who were produced in 2015 by ex-automotive sector engineers. They produce tailor made cycles and elements and lay claim to be the simply cycling company on earth with in-house Titanium 3D printing capacities. They are using Renishaw printers for the fabrication of their titanium elements.
It ought to be noted that the bikes themselves aren’t designed by Bastion, rather they have been designed by Canadian enterprise Argon 18. Bastion features engineered the AM titanium handlebars to drop straight into the Argon 18 Electron Pro bike unit.
Bastion in addition has designed AM for the stems and cranksets of the Olympic Electron Pro, although it is certainly not confirmed that these AM components were also used on the bikes on your day of the crash. You can view the imprinted titanium crank in the photo below.
The failed component appears to become a similar design to Bastion’s commercially obtainable “Base Bar”, which includes been withdrawn from sales on the company website since the mishap at the Olympics.
The web page for the product has been substituted with a affirmation from Bastion, which reads:
“Our team is dealing with the Australian Olympic Group to understand the cause behind the inability of 1 of our handlebar devices during the four-person, Australian pursuit obstacle at the Tokyo Olympics overnight.”
“Our initial concern was for Alex Porter and the entire staff. We are in frequent connection with the Australian Olympic cycling workforce and coaches, and present our assurances that people are using all means open to investigate why this occurred.”
Cycling Australia, the national administrative body responsible for the activity of cycling in the united states has also put out their own statement about the mishap and subsequent ongoing investigations.
“While the immediate focus is on the achievements of the Australian Cycling Workforce over the remainder of the Olympic program, there will be an intensive investigation and review of the factors involved in the incident.
To guarantee the fairness of the process, we can make no touch upon the details of the investigation until it really is complete.”
We acknowledge. We do not prefer to speculate.
Of training course, this hasn’t stopped other commentators from speculating regarding the cause of failure, and we don’t mind quoting them.
CyclingNews has recommended that the break in the handlebar occurred at/close to the bolt mounting hole, as seen in the photo below. This could, according to the website, recommend that the failure may have been caused by over tightening the bolt.
Naturally, we provides you the actual facts when Bastion releases their results.
As we saw inside our previous document on AM handlebars, there are a great number of riders using very similar technology from other companies in this year’s Olympics, so hopefully the findings will be released regularly, in order that others may benefit from the knowledge and avoid identical mishaps