Fricking Adafruit… that’s awesome!
Grats! Oh and well done btw, I’m a Ducati fan so you won me over with that alone 
@Biscuit_Waite ha! Yah they won me over on their Draxter… Being an F1 fan they married the two perfectly. It was beautiful.
The Draxter is a neat concept but it’s not my cuppa, however I do like where they are going with the XDiavel. I’m a MotoGP fan and for a while I kind of thought Ducati was a bit whiny about displacement prior to the 800 cc change but watching Loris Cappirossi do a lap with a top speed of 200 mph changed my mind. Mind you I’m a huge twin fan so maybe we’ll see an SV or RC51?
@Biscuit_Waite I’m not a bike guy at all to say that I don’t know anything about them. I’m a car guy and fabricator—I can talk your ear off about modern Fords, turbos and intercoolers. But I love how beautiful bikes can be. I felt that when I did this project I had to have more than one bike or it would not fully represent the diverse group of individuals who encompass it. I originally wanted to do 6 bikes, but that went out the door quick since there was no common chassis. But I felt that doing two different ones: a drag concept bike in the Draxter an the MotoGP Suzuki would help people gravitate to at least one, rather than if I only had one bike.
I watch F1 mainly, but I grew up around drag racing teams. I do watch the Isle of Mann TT and I have struggled to understand what Guy Martin is saying. But I love engineering and for this project I wanted to honor my buddy who’s crazy about bikes (he owns a Suzuki GSX-R). I
IT’s been a blast, but this has been the hardest challenge that I’ve ever given myself in 3d printing. I’ll be happy to go back to cars where there is tons of room, but I’m happy that I did it. Hopefully it pushes the 3d world into a whole new area that has yet to be explored.
Of topic, but something I was thinking about I don’t think 3d will replace regular RC, but I think the more we desginers, customers, and 3d printing enthusiasts push the limits the more can achieve and the more this industry, consumer 3d printing, will thrive.
I’ve been blown away to see some of the coverage. I knew it would get covered in 3d outlets, but http://motorcycle.com, motorcycle news, The Drive, etc. etc., I think that is awesome that people who are not into 3d printing already are seeing the uses for 3d and hopefully they jump in. Expanding the reach of 3d printing of a huge thing for me and hope that people can see and appreciate the vast uses of having this technology in their homes
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I’m a gearhead too but my flavor is more pre 72 cars, doesn’t matter what nationality. The thing that intrigues me most about your project is the ability to use 3D printing to test concept bikes,both aesthetically speaking and fabricating. I’m a machinist by trade so I’m used to visualizing things in 3d but to me nothing will replace being able to mock something up and seeing where the limits are. I’m not an engineer so sometimes I have to figure out the hard way why a single sided swing arm would be a bad idea without drilling and milling parts only to find out during testing that it won’t work.
And about 3d printing not replacing RC…well that might change, especially if printing materials get lighter and more flexible and 3d printers get better and better resolution. I’ve crashed a few RC planes with nearly a hundred hours of build time and if I can have the technology that makes it 3 hours of build time, sign me up.
Yah I should clarify that I believe 3d won’t replace the current RC classes that currently exist, but I do think that in 5 years time there will be a 3d printed class. I should fleshed out my statement more. I have a lot of jobs currently, one of them is as a freelance photographer for Hot Rod Magazine. I was recently at a rc event practicing my action shooting and the way that those cars can loose control and slam into a wall and bounce off and keep going, is amazing. I think right now 3d cars would have to have smaller motors to prevent damage, but materials that would not break or are more resilient could be used. I think RC and 3d are destined to merge to some degree. It would be awesome to see people compete with cars they designed by themselves.
I love what you said there about testing and prototyping the parts. For me that’s the huge challenge in building and designing the RC cars. Especially size. It’s really funny because to design both bikes in Fusion took me about a month. I just rebuild the bikes that I saw in the pictures that I had, but the real challenge came when I had to turn those bikes into RC vehicles, and then testing those parts, adjusting for strength, multiple systems that had to interact with them, and just dealing with physics really gives you a perspective that I don’t have while I’m just working in CAD. It’s a real challenge and I love it. I think 3d renderings are very nice, but when you have to bring that drawing or picture into the real world you face challenges that you would never think of at first, but for me that’s the fun.
I always love reading that I’m a big 3d enthusiast in some article, and I’m not really. I love cars and motorsports—complicated racing RC cars are literally little miniatures, so it’s fun to design them and to give the designs away. But just like anything that I build in real life, I pride myself on having tested them throughly so if someone chooses to build it, they know that I’ve done all the hard work, so they can just enjoy it. What I get out of it is becoming more familiar with the program that I use, so when I have clients who either need me to do CAD work or design an intake manifold for engine dyne testings of prospective part—its super easy because that’s nothing like building a car or a RC motorcycle with complex systems that must all interact and work together.
It’s the same with machining model engines. One of the main reasons I got into machining as a career was to be able to make miniature Flat 8’s or Boxer engines that actually worked. I’ve done some simple two strokes and while it isn’t complicated, it’s extremely complicated, if you get what I mean.
Looking at this design and the movement, I can see where they would want to call you an enthusiast. That’s not amateur hour stuff from what little I know of 3d printing. I couldn’t even begin to think how I would design something like that in Autodesk which I currently have. I’m much better with Solidworks for some reason but even then we’re talking a long process from first line drawn to finished CAD/CAM file.
That’s pretty impressive. If you have a link send it over. No I totally understand what you mean about not being complicated, but also being extremely complicated. Multiple systems working together, they have to be perfect or it doesn’t work. So I get it. My buddy is a machinist, I help him with solids now and again, but he lives in MasterCam.
Yah it doesn’t bother me. I’m a 3d journalist as well and I know if I just got a press release I would assume that, so it’s cool. It took a lot of iterations. When I first wanted to do it, I had to understand first how RC bikes worked. I didn’t want to go the electronic gyro route because it would add cost and I was trying to keep this build down the lowest possible. My last build the Audi R18 was a $500 build because it was unlimited—go as far and as fast as you possibly could go. I also didn’t want something where yo had to buy it and perhaps they ran out of the gyro, so I CNC’d a weighted wheel and included all the specs so if people want to build their own wheel weight then they can. If not then they can buy it from me for $15 plus shipping. But I went through at least 3-4 different iterations of bikes before I arrived at these two. It took me a second to first get used to designing a bike, but after many different toys I got better and better and the bikes looked more realistic. The first bike that I built was just flat pieces that bolted together. Just like the racing bikes that are just made of flat carbon pieces. It worked, but didn’t make any sense when you think that 3d bodies are unlike their lexan counterparts that need a frame to mount onto. It made much more sense for ease of build and realism to make the body the chassis.
My biggest concern was designing a realistic rider. Before this, I thought I sucked at making people. I assumed that my rider would be more of a stick figure than a real guy, but I surprised myself and was able to make a realistic rider. Making him work was a whole other can of worms, but what’s the fun if there is no challenge.