No, that isn’t a real, full-sized motorcycle, it’s actually a 3D printed scale replica created by designer Jacky Wan from Redicubricks. The 3D printed bike is made of over 40 individual pieces and Wan details his print and build process over on Ultimakers blog. He even includes a link to his 3D files so you can build one yourself if you think you’re up to it.
The project is certainly not for beginners. When designing the bike replica, Wan imposed several goals on himself; He wanted to maintain the external looks of the bike, all parts needed to snap fit together to make gluing easier, keep seams and striation to a minimum and everything needed to print on his Ultimaker: Original. Of course 3D printing a realistic motorcycle replica wasn’t going to make it easy for him to meet to those goals.
“A motorcycle exhibits all the characteristics that make it difficult for FDM printing.” Wan explains in his blog post on Ultimaker. “Suspended pieces, thin handlebars, chains, and small attachment points. Thin objects tend to break or fail to print. Grooved objects often require supports, and unconnected surfaces and strange shapes require many separate parts to print correctly. The easy way out would have been to use supports and combine many parts together to eliminate the internal grooves, but I was determined to keep it authentic and clean looking. Which meant many, many small and separate parts.”
In order to make his initial 3D model of the motorcycle 3D printable he needed to divide it into more than 40 parts, and he needed to make sure that each individual part was completely watertight. Because he was on a tight deadline, Wan needed to actually 3D print parts while he was still modelling and cleaning up the rest of the bike components.
And to get the best print quality on each part, object orientation was important and quite a challenge. Most of the parts on the bike required little to no supports by design but because of the odd shape of the windshield he needed to include several customized support structures.
Once all of the parts were 3D printed, they needed to be cleaned, tested for fit, and then painted. a combination of acrylic, lacquer and enamel paints were used to recreate the full-size Ducati, and each part needed to be painted individually. The bike was assembled and then glued together with basic superglue.
The results are nothing short of spectacular. When you look closely, you can tell the Ducati is a 3D printed replica, but honestly you need to look very closely. The level of detail is ridiculous. The chain even connects with the tiny teeth on the gears! This was printed on an Ultimaker: Original. Seriously.
The amount of work that Wan put into this model is breathtaking. Not only does it show some pretty incredible artistic skill, but he also got just about every ounce of detail that his Ultimaker had to give.
You can read Jacky Wan’s entire guest post on Ultimaker’s blog for more about the bike. And if you’re brave enough, you can download the 3D models to print and construct your own from YouMagine.
