Atherton Bikes has taken another step into 3D printing with its new titanium crankset. It’s a component designed with a bold goal in mind: build the last set of cranks you will ever need.
The Welsh brand, known for its 3D-printed frames (and its founders of course), developed the cranks using the same in-house manufacturing approach at its headquarters in Machynlleth, Wales. The cranks are produced on the company’s RenAM 500Q machine. This allows engineers to design internal structures that traditional forging or machining simply cannot achieve.
Built around strength and durability
Atherton says the idea came from the kind of riding that happens right outside its door.
“With our headquarters here only a few minutes down the road from Dyfi Bike Park, we’re forever reminded about the importance of durability and strength and how this can be overlooked in some areas of the industry,” says Atherton Bikes design engineer Scott Aisthorpe. “And I think cranks are no different with this.”
Titanium became the obvious material choice thanks to its strength-to-weight ratio (and maybe just because they can?). Combined with 3D printing, it allows Atherton to build hollow crank arms with internal rib structures that reinforce high-stress zones without adding unnecessary weight.
“Our laser powder bed fusion machine allows us to create hollow structures and those structures can have internal ribs, they can have different wall thicknesses,” the engineer explains. “You can kind of refine all the different aspects of that.”
Engineering from the inside out
Much of the development work happened in simulation before any metal was printed.
Atherton engineers used finite element analysis to identify areas of stress and refine the shape of the crank arms through multiple design iterations.
“You apply those loads and you can look at the results and you can see sort of hot and cold spots,” says Will Carne, Atherton Bikes design engineer. “Typically what we will do is run through the results of every one of the different load cases. We look for any spots that are too high stress.”
The goal is a perfectly balanced structure.
“In a perfect world, when you finish, the part should be evenly stressed in a way that’s there’s no massive hot spots and there’s no under stressed areas either.”
Designed to outlast your bike
The finished cranks use a tubular external shape with complex internal reinforcement, something…
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