Bolide F HR 3D: the first high performance 3D printed bike

Bolide F Hr 3D: The first and fastest high-performance 3D-printed bicycle ever built. Designed for Filippo Ganna’s UCI Hour Record attempt.

“We always want to push product design to new levels to allow our champions to achieve their goals,” said Fausto Pinarello, Chairman of the Board of Pinarello.

“Working closely with Filippo Ganna and his team, the INEOS Grenadiers, to develop this revolutionary product is part of our company’s DNA. The result of this intense research, the spirit of innovation it generated, and the technology it produced has since spread to every Pinarello product.”

“This is such a unique project; we believe it’s the beginning of a new manufacturing era. The next step will be to make it more affordable by finding ways to scan riders with more affordable equipment and automatically design each unique bike. From a world champion, to every World Tour rider, and eventually to each and every cyclist out there,” Says Federico Sbrissa, Pinarello’s Chief Marketing Officer.

The AirStream technology

The legs of the rider are moving up and down all the time in a rather complex but very repeatable path. The air flows around the seat tube and seat post is never straight. It is always alternating as the rider’s legs are constantly deflecting the air around them.

This alternating airflow makes it very difficult for the air to stay attached on the seat tube. The consequence is that the airflow is constantly separating from the seat tube, reating a large low-pressure area around it which in turn creates large amounts of drag. This is partly why the combined drag of the seat tube and seat post is almost 40% of the total drag of the frame and fork.

The University of Adelaide studied how humpback whales can do very tight manoeuvres in the oceans. 

Nature has great way of natural development and has been doing it for millions of years. Humpback whales are well known for their ability to perform very tight turns as well as spectacular jumps out of the water.

Researchers have found that the tubercles (the protrusions in the front of their flippers) contribute significantly to this ability. In fact, researchers at the University of Adelaide have been working on this shape since 2006, first using them on aircraft wings and fans and then on bicycle frames, filing an international patent application for a bicycle frame in 2016.

Unfortunately, just putting a few bumps on the front of the seat tube is not enough to make anyone faster.

So to optimize our HR bike, Pinarello and its aerodynamic R&D partner NablaFlow ran many simulations, finding some effective designs, and some less so.

After extensive CFD and wind tunnel testing with live riders, our new AirStream technology was born, incorporating a unique pattern of AeroNodes on the frame that takes full advantage of the University of Adelaide's pioneering research.

The new frame has been designed to reduce as much as possible the frontal area also taking advantage of the removal of the 3:1 UCI rule. 

There have been some substantial gains from making the wheel hubs as well as the bottom bracket (BB) narrower than normal. The BB was narrowed down to 54mm (from 70mm), the wheel hubs from 120mm down to 89mm on the rear, and from 100mm down to 69mm on the front.

AirFoil sections

The next obvious improvement was to take advantage of the removal of the 3:1 regulation. This allows longer and slimmer airfoil sections to be used. It is very well known that airfoil sections that have an aspect ratio of 6:1 or even 8:1 do perform significantly better than the old 3:1 ratio.

3D PRINTING A NEW REVOLUTIONARY MANUFACTURING PROCESS

Metal 3D printing was first pioneered in cycling by Pinarello at world-class level in 2015, when the handlebar for the UCI Hour Record timed by Tissot bike for Bradley Wiggins was raced to a record distance. 3D printing is well known for its ability to create difficult shapes with ease and to allow to manufacture each unit custom shaped for one single athlete.

To find the expertise, the knowledge, and the appropriate equipment we worked with Metron A.E. in the U.K.

The HR bike’s frame and fork were designed to take advantage of a new alloy called Scalmalloy, a high strength Scandium Aluminium-Magnesium alloy that it is an aerospace material specifically designed for 3D printing.

The choice of material and machine is crucial here.

Metron used a large format EOS M400 machine to 3D print the Scalmalloy parts. Indeed, the frame was only five parts, with the front triangle made in three pieces and the seat-stays / chain-stays as two more pieces.

These pieces were made individually and after meticulous cleaning and support removal, the parts were bonded together using an aerospace-grade epoxy.

In addition, titanium has been used on the fork head and on the handlebar extensions which are the higher stress areas.

A bike that is destined to be ridden by a world champion, besides having exceptional aerodynamics, must also have extraordinary strength. So, an exact copy of the frame which will be used in the UCI Hour Record timed by Tissot attempt was send to EFBE in Germany for an independent strength test. The frame, fork and seatpost were put under a gruelling test regime that included the full range of fatigue, impact and torsion tests as specified by ISO4210. As a result, the new Bolide F HR 3D is the first fully ridable, UCI-compliant aerodynamic bike passing the ISO4210 and that will be ridden by a world champion on a world UCI Hour Record timed by Tissot attempt.

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