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Danny MacAskill midair on his custom Santa Cruz bike.

Making aCustom Ride
Santa Cruz Bicycles Expands Their R&D
Capabilities with 3D Printing

Jack Russell

Santa Cruz Bicycles

Case Study

For Santa Cruz Bicycles (Santa Cruz), a bike ismore than just a way to get from one place toanother. A Santa Cruz bike is the embodiment of
the company’s goal to build the world’s highest
performing mountain bikes, guiding riders over roughterrain and on to new vistas. It’s the company’s spiritof innovation that makes this vision a reality.

Having a real frame 3D
printed in person is really
helpful for us because we cansee what we need to change
without making a carbon tool
and a real frame, which takes
a lot of time and money.”

Test fitting a 3D printed ULTEM™ 1010 resin mandrel in the composite lay-up
tool used to make the carbon fiber bike frame.

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A One-of-a-Kind
Challenge
One admirer is professional street trials and mountainbike cyclist Danny MacAskill, who asked Santa
Cruz to make a custom trials bike for him. Thedilemma, however, was that this would be a oneoff design, made to Danny’s specifications. Many
Santa Cruz bikes use carbon-fiber frames, making
them strong but lightweight. The stiff frames androbust components let riders traverse terrain typicallyconsidered passable only by sure-footed mountaingoats. That reputation is what draws mountain biking
enthusiasts to Santa Cruz bikes.

Document
Case
StudyTitle Here

Since Santa Cruz carbon-fiber bikes are massproduced in Asia, it posed a challenge in how todesign and produce the carbon-fiber frame in-houseon a tight timeline.

The finished “Danny bike” developed in part with 3D printed tooling.

“Developing Danny’s bike was really uncharted
territory for us,” said Santa Cruz design director
Geoff Casey. “We’d never really made anything likethat before in-house and determining the (production)
timeline…was one of the biggest challenges because
were were trying so many new and different things
that we’d never done before.”
Santa Cruz R&D manager Nic McCrae added,“What we were trying to achieve is somethingthat’s exactly on Danny’s specs, that would be
as tough as possible and be an R&D platform forus to experiment with different techniques andmanufacturing technology.”

3 3Charting New
Manufacturing
Territory
Concepts for the design were fleshed out with 3D
printed frames, giving designers a much faster way
to visualize and ideate various design ideas. “Havinga real frame 3D printed in person is really helpful for
us because we can see what we need to change
without making a carbon tool and a real frame,
which takes a lot of time and money,” said seniorindustrial designer Jack Russell. “It’s so nice to feelthe frame in your hand and see the tube proportions
in person. You just can’t get that from seeing it on ascreen,” he added.
But once the design was set, the challenge of
producing it in carbon fiber remained, requiring acompletely new set of tools and molds. McCrae andhis team overcame that problem by again turning
to 3D printing. Using ULTEM™ 1010 resin material,
McCrae fashioned 3D printed mandrels that formed
the basis for mold tooling used to make the carbonfiber frame.

Design concept bike frames 3D printed using ASA material.

McCrae explained, “ULTEM™ 1010 resin helpedus create latex bladders that are incredibly precise.
They open up the design space to shapes that are
traditionally very hard to machine, or would require
multiple set-ups on a five-axis machine, whichmeans time and money.” Not only did this saveon cost but it meant Santa Cruz could meet theirproduction timeline. McCrae continued, “With those(tools) we could turn around a design in just a matterof hours, iterate on the shapes and go from CAD toridable prototype in a matter of weeks.”DocumentCaseStudyTitle Here

Black 3D printed carbon fiber-filled nylon 12 holding fixtures anchor a bike frame
during fatigue testing.

4Broad Application
Santa Cruz worked with Stratasys to develop
the initial tools to create Danny’s bike, but soonbought their own Fortus 450mc™ 3D Printer.
“Because of the great results with the Dannybike project, we actually decided to purchase aFortus 450mc machine with nylon 12 carbon fiberand ULTEM™ 1010 resin capabilities,” said McCrae.
From there it was only a matter of time before theSanta Cruz team expanded 3D printing’s application,
covering the spectrum from concept modeling andprototyping to composite tooling to jigs and fixtures.
“We’re actually running the printer on a daily basis,”
said McCrae. He added that not only does thedesign and engineering department use 3D printing
but so does the test lab. Parts for test fixtures andfatigue-test and impact machines “use carbon fiberfilled nylon a lot,” he added.
“I feel like we’ll be able to utilize the vast array oftechnologies that Stratasys offers and in the end,
just develop better bikes quicker, in a more efficientway, and put better products out there for people toenjoy,” said McCrae.

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Case Study

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