Generative design provides new competitive edge for cycling innovation
The bicycle component industry is highly competitive and innovation is a key differentiator—whether it’s for performance, cost, weight, or speed to market. SRAM knew the traditional design and manufacturing process was becoming outdated. By experimenting with generative design and additive manufacturing for a new bike crankarm, they could produce a part that was twice as strong and 20% lighter. Above all, they realized a new source of research and development that will give their parts and business a new-found edge.
Generative design helps SRAM create lighter and stronger parts
SRAM fuels research and development for new, lightweight bike crankarm
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EXPLORE GENERATIVE DESIGN FOR MANUFACTURING
As a worldwide bicycle component manufacturer for both road and mountain bikes, SRAM’s mission is to provide the best components to the market and the best user experience to the cyclist.
Standing out in a competitive cycling industry
SRAM
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Image courtesy of SRAM
But the biggest obstacles to their goals? First off, it’s a highly competitive industry where performance and quality are key. Weight, stiffness, cost, and manufacturing constraints are immediate limitations—all with the added challenge of quickly delivering new, breakthrough designs. Exploration of how to innovate with new methods and tools is crucial to push the limits and stand out with high-end products.
“We do a lot of iteration when designing parts, but sometimes it’s very fast in the time cycle that we have,” said Dhiraj Madura, global industrial design manager, SRAM. “The product at the end may not be exactly what we want as far as the product spec, but we get as close as we can. As our products get more complicated, we’re ready to test new things like generative design and additive manufacturing because that’s how we’re going to become even better in our industry.”
Image courtesy of SRAM
At the Factory of the Future at MxD in Chicago, SRAM joined Autodesk’s Generative Design Field Lab to discover how additive manufacturing and generative design powered by Fusion 360 might benefit the company’s research and development for new products. The project kicked off to create concepts for a new mountain bike crankarm. The crankarm is a critical component to the drivetrain, and weight is everything. The lighter the crankarm, the less energy the cyclist spends to pedal.
Using the artificial intelligence in generative design, SRAM explored multiple design iterations that were previously unthinkable. Out of the dozens of candidates generated by the AI, the engineers selected two designs for prototyping.
Prototype 1: Additive Industries - a pioneering additive manufacturing company that integrates the powder bed fusion process 3D printed version 1 of the crankarm prototype in titanium. SRAM completed the final machining for a true hybrid manufacturing solution combining additive and subtractive manufacturing.
Prototype 2: Mazak – an industry leader in the manufacture of machine tools, machined a 5-axis aluminum version of the crankarm with their multi-axis turn-mill machining center.
Generating a better crankarm
The new titanium crankarm isn’t just about eye candy—it’s purely designed from an optimum engineering and manufacturing perspective. The results are evident. It’s 20% lighter and twice as strong.
“The future of SRAM is in our products and innovation, and our end goal is to deliver cycling components that inspire the rider and make bikes faster,” said Will King, senior design engineer, SRAM. “Using new design tools, such as Fusion 360 and generative design allows us to not only optimize performance parameters, but also shorten our development time to try new ideas, evaluate them, and bring them to the prototype phase. In the end, we can deliver the best possible product to our customers.”
New generatively designed crankarm is 2x stronger and 20% lighter
Image courtesy of SRAM
Generative design technology helped SRAM explore new designs for a crankshaft.
