As Team GB celebrated its success at the Paris 2024 Olympic Games, global engineering technologies company, Renishaw, is celebrating its role in providing additive manufacturing (AM) expertise for the manufacture of a highly successful track bike for British Cycling.

At the Games, Team GB brought home 65 medals, including 11 in cycling, eight of which came from the track. To assist the riders who faced fierce competition at the Games, British Cycling’s bike had to deliver maximum performance in speed, balance and aerodynamics. This made design and manufacturing capabilities, including metal additive manufacturing (3D printing), a critical part of the organisation’s efforts to help Team GB maximise its medal haul.

After the 2020 Olympic Games in Tokyo, British Cycling knew it wanted to extend its existing partnerships with Lotus Engineering, Renishaw and Hope Technology, to develop and manufacture its bike for the 2024 Olympic Games.

However, because of Covid delays to the 2020 Games and shorter deadlines to present a new bike for 2024, it was under significant time constraints to deliver an optimised bike.

“The carbon fibre parts produced using traditional machining methods for the Tokyo bike met all the requirements we had, but time constraints for the Paris bike meant that this method was no longer viable for some bespoke parts,” explained Dr Oliver Caddy, lead project engineer at British Cycling. “After seeing the benefits of AM and what it helped us achieve on the Tokyo bike, we knew it could be a manufacturing method to explore further.”

Ben Collins, lead AM applications engineer at Renishaw, added: “After determining that the British Cycling team could not produce core crank and seat posts components in carbon fibre within the shorter time frame required, we began creating some additively manufactured prototypes in plastic.”

“Additive manufacturing enabled us to create complex geometries that removed any unnecessary weight while delivering the strength required for the athletes to reach racing speed. To develop a more aerodynamic seat post, engineers designed more free-form geometries to hollow out the part as much as possible, something that would not be achievable using traditional methods,” added Collins.

British Cycling’s partnership with Renishaw resulted in it having a first-of-its-kind aerodynamic seat post, featuring a hollow centre and backwards leaning design, allowing airflow through the centre of the bike.

Additive manufacturing facilitated the rapid production of unique titanium seat posts to the exact measurements of the individual riders. Over the course of the project Renishaw manufactured over 1 000 parts to support 32 track bikes plus spares.