3D Printed Motorcycle 1972 Honda CB500 by Jonathan Brand
Canadian artist Jonathan Brand has produced a full-size 3D print of a 1972 Honda CB500.
Jonathan first got into 3D printing around five years ago and had always wanted a motorcycle.
Brand has effectively married those two passions together to produce a quite unique piece of artwork that is sure to be replicated around the world as 3D printing really starts to take off and becomes more and more economical.
Countless hours went into programming the 3D printer which then toiled away at each part individually, a task that also takes many hours for each of the hundeds of the replicated components.
All those parts needed to be made quite small so Jonathan could use a hobby level 3D printer rather than a large and prohibitively expensive commerical grade machine. The motorcycle was produced using a pair of Ultimaker 3D printers.
18 rolls of plastic amounting to 18kg of material were used to produce the transparent looking CB500 which has been made as thin as possible from translucent biodegradable corn based plastic.
Jonathan Brand told 3Dprint.com, “If you have a lot of money, you can get a pretty robust and reliable printer, but the material still seems to be a limitation,” he added.
“The biggest problem I’ve had is getting reliable quality printing materials in the US.
“I’d really like to experiment with a resin based printer, but for now it’s just too expensive for the large scale work I’m doing.”
He is also firm that the machine is an artwork rather than an engineering project, “I personally think it’s art, because I have a lot of respect for engineers,” Brand said.
We think there is a little of both art and engineering in Jonathan’s project.
Check out the video below where Jonathan explains his painstaking production methods where it took him a full year working out of his Connecticut studio.
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