This $18,600 fully 3D

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Have two stacks of high society burning a hole in your pocket? Dutch titanium frame maker Pilot has a new bike that might be of interest.

A cycling product being 3D printed isn’t really an attention grabber these days. However, there had been one major milestone yet to fall up until this point: a fully 3D printed titanium frame.

This week, that changed when Pilot unveiled the Seiren fully 3D-printed titanium frame prototype at Eurobike. It’s turning some heads to say the least.

Why has it taken so long for a complete 3D printed ti frame to arrive? Well, a whole host of reasons, all ultimately having to do with cost.

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Printers that can manufacture titanium products are expensive, especially ones big enough to make something on the scale of a bike frame. And the flammable nature of titanium in the form needed to print it makes it prohibitively dangerous outside of specialty facilities.

That all serves to drive up the cost of the final product.

The Seiren will set you back €17,000 (about $18,625 USD) for a complete bike built with Dura-Ace, Corima wheels, and all other high-end carbon bits. It’s expected to go on sale in 2024 and will be a complete build only at first, with a spec similar to what is being displayed at Eurobike.

For comparison, Pilot sells its top titanium road frame, the Celes, which is traditionally welded, built up with Dura-Ace for €9,500.

But enough about the fact that the Seiren is expensive. Here’s a pitch about why it might not be so insane after all — that is, if you came into reading this already willing to drop five figures on a road bike.

Some will protest that this bike is merely an exercise in seeing what’s possible to create. But 3D printing has some very tangible positives, most notably to weight.

This frame on display at Eurobike weighs just 1,150 grams, putting it in the ballpark, well, the nosebleeds at Dodger Stadium at least, of carbon road bikes. That’s due to Pilot being able to shave the wall thicknesses to as thin as necessary and structurally allowable, as small as 0.6mm in this case, to keep weight to an absolute minimum. Butting traditional titanium tubes can only do so much in this department.

Pilot says it can take things even further and drop another 100 grams from that, possibly more. The point being, reaching the UCI weight minimum, or lower, won’t be a terribly difficult feat with this frame as the focal point.

At the same time, the fully 3D printed frame is stronger than its welded counterpart because it eliminates the stress points of welds. The strongest possible frame would be one printed as a single piece. However, due to limitations on the size of the 3D printer at its disposal, Pilot had to split the frame into three parts, all printed simultaneously on the same printer, then glue them together. Even these glued sections are much stronger than welds, Pilot marketing and communications manager Tim Blankers tells me.

Then there’s the argument for 3D printed frames looking way cooler. The Seiren has carbon-smooth junctions in a metal frame. Plus, you certainly wouldn’t get that seat-tube, top-tube junction on any welded bike.

And no, that is not a Trek Madone homage, or knock-off, or whatever you want to call it. It’s happenstance that Trek arrived at this form because of aerodynamics, and Pilot, well, because that was the only way to make the three sections of the frame print correctly to connect to one another. Not that the design is entirely the same, either. Trek has a hole running through this section; Pilot does not.

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Another plus: if eco-friendliness is on the mind, a titanium frame has little in the way of waste on the production end, and is fully recyclable at the end of its life, whenever that may be. Pilot offers a 25-year warranty on its bikes if that says anything about both its confidence in both its craftsmanship and the material.

So that brings home my point about the cost not being that outrageous. If you plan to own this bike for a long time, perhaps the rest of your life, then that’s small compared to the $14,000 (or more) of a top-end, off-the-shelf carbon road bikes these days, one that will be outdated within three years, and will likely not last the quarter-century of Pilot’s warranty if truly ridden hard that entire time.

Blankers wouldn’t say what the warranty on the Seiren is yet due to the bike still undergoing final testing. Though he says if they couldn’t offer the same guarantee, it wouldn’t be ready for the market yet.

Okay, so you’re sold on it? Well, one problem: it’s not for sale just yet.

Although Pilot is putting a price tag on it, a hefty one at that, the bike is still a prototype.

How new is it?

The model on display was only built up Friday, Blankers tells me.

But it could be in your hands as soon as next year. Pilot guarantees its bikes for 25 years, what’s one more to wait?