British bike brand Robot Bike Co have unveiled its R160 – a made-to-measure, partly 3D-printed titanium and carbon enduro bike. It’s really quite something.

Additive manufacturing

Now technically it isn’t 3D-printed, it’s ‘additive manufacturing’. So all you science engineering boffins can hold off sending the emails please. But ‘3D-printing’ is what most of us Joe Publics know this sort of thing and it helps us visualise the potential here so let’s just cal it 3D-printed for now.

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The R160 is made up of 3D-printed titanium lugs which are joined up with proprietary carbon fibre tubes and bonded together using a process called double lap joint bonding.

In each R160 frame there are 11 titanium lugs and 8 carbon fibre tubes. Through variation of lug design and tube design there are a total of 225,720 geometry variations available. That beats the Small, Medium, Large and X-Large of most companies!

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The Savile Row of the bike world

The principal unique selling point of the R160 is that it can be tailor made to each individual customer’s dimensions or specifications. Each R160 will be bespoke to its owner. Robot Bike Co call this “mass customisation”.

Robot Bike Co state: “If you are trying to produce the very best frame it makes no sense to then only offer it in a small number of sizes when the people you are selling it to come in all shapes and sizes. Think of Robot Bike Co. as the Savile Row of the bike world.”

Using 3D-printing also means Robot Bike Co are able to make certain parts of a frame in certain shapes that aren’t really feasible by traditional frame manufacturing methods.

Dave Weagle’s DW suspension

Robot Bike Co have teamed up with Dave Weagle to supply the rear suspension design. The R160 sports a system dubbed ‘DW6’ which appears to be a variation of Weagle’s floating-pivot DW Link design.

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The R160 has what Robot Bike Co call ‘Aggressive’ geometry. The actual final geometry is dependent on what the customer’s vital stats are. Customers send in their measurements and Robot Bike Co send back their recommended geometry for approval/discussion.

As mentioned it uses DW6 suspension design which has various claims to be efficient at pedalling and have a varied rate throughout the stroke; supple at the start, supportive in the midstroke and bottomless at the end.

The back end is 142 x 12. The bottom bracket is a standard threaded affair. The frames will come with lifetime warranty.

Who are Robot Bike Co?

They are a collective of companies and individuals based in the South West of England. Between them they have backgrounds in aerospace, automotive industries, bike journalism and Formula 1. You will be able to read more of their story over on the Robot Bike Co website.

The price for a R160 will be £4,395. The lead time on builds is approximately four weeks. They’ll be open for order as of next month (June).