How can bicycle manufacturers add more value to their products? How do they accelerate research and development, optimize production, and reduce costs? These have always been challenges for companies in that field.
3D printing technology can optimize bicycle manufacturing to a certain extent, bringing many benefits in terms of design innovation, cost control, and streamlining production processes.
In recent years, an increasing number of bicycle manufacturers have begun to integrate mature 3D printing technology into their production lines, and have benefited as a result.
Coloris Bicyclette Co. Ltd. is a Japanese bicycle repair and sales shop established in 2012, specializing in the manufacturing and sales of bicycle accessories and peripheral tools. Since 2015, Coloris Bicyclette has begun designing, developing and launching its own branded bicycle frames and components, while also exploring the use of 3D printing technology to manufacture bicycle parts, accessories, and related tools.
In early 2023, Coloris Bicyclette established a 3D printing project called “Project RAITEI (*)” within its bicycle business. (*The name has now been changed to “3D Manufacturing Department”.) They used the full potential of 3D printing technology to create original bicycle accessories such as Air Tag protective cases, leak-proof cover for bicycle lights, pedal wrenches, chain checkers, and more. This initiative aimed to upgrade brand services, increase product added value, and subsequently boost sales.
Coloris Bicyclette faces pressure from lost sales opportunities and high outsourcing costs.
During its earlier years, Coloris Bicyclette encountered numerous challenges, such as difficulties in obtaining bicycle-related parts for repair and sales. These issues had a direct impact on Coloris Bicyclette’ business, as it caused them to miss out on many sales opportunities. They previously outsourced the production of bicycle parts, but the high cost of outsourcing, subsequent long lead times and high labour costs were challenges Coloris Bicyclette also had to face.
To effectively address the challenges they faced, Coloris Bicyclette chose to purchase a Raise3D Pro3 Plus for producing spare parts and prototypes for bicycle components. Materials, including PLA, TPU, and PET-CF, are employed in their prints, and the Raise3D Pro3 Plus operates approximately 130 hours per week on average. As of now, Coloris Bicyclette has produced around 600 parts.
Delivery times have been reduced from 4 months to as little as 1 week to 10 minutes
After using the Raise3D Pro3 Plus, Coloris Bicyclette has significantly solved the issue of long delivery times faced by outsourcing the production of their components. Previously, the delivery time for bicycle parts was typically around 4 months, but it has now been reduced to as little as 1 week to 10 minutes, resulting in a time cost reduction of more than 93%.
User-friendly slicing software
“The slicing software is easy to project my image of what I have in mind onto the product, easy to use and performs well.”—— Daisuke Kajii
Raise3D offers the 3D slicing program ideaMaker, which supports automatic parameter optimization, customizable support creation, variable settings for selected regions, and free modification of models. Additionally, it allows users to easily create surface textures.
Efficient remote management
Raise3D provides a web-based 3D printing online management platform RaiseCloud. It is a fully-integrated ecosystem for 3D printing management. This system allows printer operators to remotely control and monitor the entire printing production process in real-time and enables scheduling of consecutive multi-task printing.
Since the Raise3D Pro3 Plus purchased by Coloris Bicyclette is located at their other office, they can utilize RaiseCloud for remote monitoring and wireless print management, thereby improving the efficiency of their printing projects. RaiseCloud significantly saves Coloris Bicyclette significant time and effort.
When discussing future plans for Raise3D products, Coloris Bicyclette expressed interest in exploring 3D metal processing.
“I am satisfied with the manufacturing quality of Raise3D products” —— Daisuke Kajii
