3D Printed Bike Sanps in Half Rather Humerously

[Brian_Krassenstein]

Engineering students at Carleton University in Canada were poised to experience the culmination of their hard work and design genius by showing off their 3D printed bicycle at a press conference. And then, it all went horribly, horribly wrong. As one of the team strapped on a helmet and prepared to take a spin around the room for the members of the Fourth Estate, the bike unceremoniously snapped and became a pair of unicycles. You can read the whole story here: http://3dprint.com/43882/3d-printed-bike-fails/


Below is a photo of the student designers with their broken bicycle. Do you guys feel for these students? I guess it's back to the drawing board to make a sturdier 3D printed bicycle, or they could just uses these as unicycles

[soofle616]

Not even a little bit. They brought a product in for a demo without properly testing it. That's just dumb. Yes things can go wrong even with extensive testing. Hell, sometimes it's the test itself that causes unseen damage that results in failure during a demo. But to never even attempt a full test before showing off something tells me that these guys were too busy patting themselves on the back for having a 3d printed bike that they didn't bother with some very basic procedures. They say they weight tested the frame and it held up to 120lbs. Granted I don't know how heavy the guy in the video is that sat on it but I'm guessing he weighs more than that. A proper test would have taken the weight of the expected end user, multiplied it by a factor of more than 1, then applied that weight to the bike in ready to ride form. Anything less than that is an incomplete test. It's like saying that a car is safe in a 5mph head-on collision but testing it by swinging a cardboard box at the front bumper.