国产吃瓜黑料

MEET OUTSIDE DIGITAL

Full access to 国产吃瓜黑料, now at a lower price

JOIN NOW

Image
(Glyn Smith via Shutterstock)

Hot Off the Press: How 3-D Printing is Revolutionizing Outdoor Gear

R&D at outdoor companies is being revolutionized by 3-D printing. The result: Better gear that gets to you faster.

Published: 
Image
(Photo: Glyn Smith via Shutterstock)

New perk: Easily find new routes and hidden gems, upcoming running events, and more near you. Your weekly Local Running Newsletter has everything you need to lace up! .

In 2010, designers at Trek decided to create a new road bike for pro cycling鈥檚 spring classics. A key feature they envisioned was a suspension system that would allow the seat tube to flex independently of the frame, so riders wouldn鈥檛 bounce around on cobblestone streets. At their Waterloo, Wisconsin, headquarters, the development team drafted a three-dimensional model on a computer, then used an to print鈥攜es, print鈥攁 working prototype.

Notes were taken, tweaks were made. Over the next few months, additional prototypes were printed and tested, until a successful design was cast in carbon. A process that would have taken a year using traditional manufacturing methods instead took a few months. The result, the popular , debuted last spring and was the first to include Trek鈥檚 innovative IsoSpeed suspension system.

While it sounds like a sci-fi nerd鈥檚 still-颅distant dream, 3-D printing technology has been around for a decade. Only in the past few years, however, has it begun to revolutionize product 颅design and manufacturing. Name an industry鈥攁erospace, automobiles, medicine鈥攁nd chances are it鈥檚 颅being used to some degree, from creating cheaper, faster molds to fabricating custom parts. Gear brands in particular have piled on. In addition to its test suspension, Trek prints handlebars and saddles. Snowboarding behemoth Burton prints helmets, goggles, and bindings. CamelBak prints water bottles. And New Balance prints running cleats and even entire shoes.

鈥淭he advances we鈥檝e made in binding design in just the past five years are certainly from the fact that we were able to use 3-D printing,鈥 says Scott Barbieri, a VP at Burton.

In many respects, 3-D printing works just like 2-D printing. Guided by a digital blueprint, a 3-D printer deposits layer upon layer of raw material on a flat surface, the same way your ink-jet deposits pigment on 颅paper. The difference: the machines squirt out plastics or metals in powder or liquid form. 颅Extremely thin layers are 颅melted together with lasers or bond as they cool, and the result is a seamless, solid object.

Printers are still mostly 颅limited to materials like plastic resin and stainless steel, which don鈥檛 offer the quality and performance of, say, carbon fiber. And they can鈥檛 come anywhere close to competing with mass-颅 production systems that allow companies like Burton to churn out a snowboard binding every two hours. But boutique brands and some geeked-out consumers are already fabricating custom gear via third-party printers. A handful of independent designers have used this formula for accessories like smartphone mounts and ankle braces, and one amateur rider in Germany even printed his own bike-light clamp after a store-bought one didn鈥檛 mount properly on his bike.

鈥淲e鈥檙e not far off from 颅people being able to print their own gloves or golf balls,鈥 says Bruce Bradshaw, director of marketing for Stratasys, a 3-D-printing company in Eden Prairie, Minnesota. Burton鈥檚 Barbieri takes an even more optimistic view: 鈥淚f you can design it on a computer, you can have it in your hand.鈥

From 国产吃瓜黑料 Magazine, Jul 2013 Lead Photo: Glyn Smith via Shutterstock

Popular on 国产吃瓜黑料 Online