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在线翻译:
szdaily -> Tech and Science -> 
Startup reveals $300 carbon fiber frame
    2018-05-23  08:53    Shenzhen Daily

After a career that included helping Google build out data centers and speeding packages for Amazon.com to customers, Jim Miller is doing what many Silicon Valley executives do after stints at big companies: finding more time to ride his bike.

But this bike is a little different. Arevo has produced what it says is the world’s first carbon fiber bicycle with a 3D-printed frame.

The startup* is using the bike to demonstrate its design software and printing technology, which it hopes to use to produce parts for bicycles, aircraft, space vehicles and other applications where designers prize the strength and lightness of “composite” carbon fiber parts but are put off by the high-cost and labor-intensive* process of making them.

Traditional carbon fiber bikes are expensive because workers lay individual layers of carbon fiber impregnated* with resin* around a mold of the frame by hand.

The frame then gets baked in an oven to melt the resin and bind the carbon fiber sheets together.

Arevo’s technology uses a “deposition head” mounted on a robotic arm to print out the 3D shape of the bicycle frame.

The head lays down strands of carbon fiber and melts a thermoplastic* material to bind the strands, all in one step.

The process involves almost no human labor, allowing Arevo to build bicycle frames for US$300 in costs, even in pricey Silicon Valley.

“We’re right in line with what it costs to build a bicycle frame in Asia,” Miller said. “Because the labor costs are so much lower, we can re-shore the manufacturing of composites.”(SD-Agencies)

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