General Electric may not be having its best year ever, but that doesn’t mean it still can’t reinvent a wheel now and then.
The industrial giant has collaborated with California’s HRE Wheels to create a set of lightweight 3D-printed titanium wheels that feature a design that would fit right into an M.C. Escher print.
The wheels were created at GE’s AddWorks facility in Ohio, using 3D printing system known as Electron Beam Melting, which is an additive method that melts layers of titanium powder to create a strong, lightweight structure that can be styled in complex ways that are unimaginable through traditional methods.
According to HRE, making a titanium wheel would normally require starting with a 100-pound forged block of the metal and machining it down to 20 pounds with its form restricted by the tools involved. 3D-printing turns the process around, reduces waste and dramatically expands the possibilities for shapes.
The HRE3D+, as it is called, features what appears to be an array of spokes wrapped around other spokes, which are broken up into five sections that are attached to a titanium hub and a carbon fiber-reinforced plastic rim.
The wheels are only a concept at this time, but HRE says that larger printers currently in development will allow the six titanium pieces to be replaced by one while reducing both the cost and time required to make them.