As an optional extra, BMW Motorrad will be offering its iParts 3D by the middle of the year, while its Mobile 3D printer will arrive from September onwards.
This is a 3D printing system which will allow BMW Motorrad dealers and customers to print out spare parts as required on site so as to be able to continue their journey as quickly as possible.
This is why 250 selected BMW Motorrad sales partners worldwide will be initially fitted with a permanently installed 3D printing system.
This system, which includes an integrated processing centre, allows for the manufacture and subsequent machining of large and complex parts such as bevel gears, crown gears and engine housings.
In this way, the company will be raising the whole area of spare parts to a new level, where the new system will mean that even very rarely required parts not generally stocked by BMW Motorrad sales partners can be supplied on a just-in-time basis.
Smaller parts such as handbrakes, clutch or gear levers, valve caps, fork bridges and turn indicator glasses can even be printed out by the customers themselves using the printer from home or while out and about since it can be stowed in a top or side case.
In order to compensate for the additional weight of the mobile printer, a special top case made of carbon fibre reinforced plastic (CFRP) has been developed offering a weight reduction of approximately 4.5kg as compared to a standard top case.
Special layer structuring in the CFRP's fibre composition ensures noise and vibration damping for optimum, disruption-free use of the printer.
It was also possible to integrate the power supply in the laminate so as to avoid cables being visible on the outside.
The design data and material specifications required for printing purposes are supplied from the BMW iCloud and is downloaded directly onto the 3D printing systems via mobile phone, tablet or PC. A functioning internet connection is of course required for successful download.
No connection? No problem.
Riders can also make use of another optional equipment item - BMW Motorrad iParts Explorer which allows the spare part's data to be directly saved onto a smartphone before a journey.
Even back then it was possible to create spare parts from plastic using laser technology and a CNC-controlled layering method.
This technique has since advanced considerably and it is now possible to produce spare parts made of various metal alloys using Selective Laser Sintering (SLS).
In addition to creating parts from metals such as aluminium, steel and titanium, the printers also allow fast turn-out of plastic parts.
This means that a turn indicator glass which is broken during a fall, for instance, can quickly be replaced with a print-out version.
It is even possible to replace a cracked rear mirror by using the printer.
BMW Motorrad has carried out extensive functional and strength tests on all the parts approved for 3D printing – initially in the lab and later in the field.
"Once again we were able to draw on in-house synergies and tap into the relevant preliminary development work carried out by BMW Automobiles. Ultimately the challenge was to develop a small, portable yet high-performance 3D printer for transportation on the motorcycle. We managed to achieve this in the form of the BMW Motorrad iPart 3D Mobile Printer. The SLS unit is equipped with its own power supply – a high-performance saline battery – and was subjected to a range of highly rigorous functional tests both in extreme cold and in blistering heat with a high level of dust exposure," said BMW Motorrad iParts head Ignaz Druckmeyer.
The BMW Motorrad iPart 3D Mobile Printer was most recently exposed to extreme conditions in the Australian outback, for example.
Even at peak temperatures of 48-degrees Celsius and with high volumes of dust, the replicated parts equalled their conventionally manufactured counterparts in all respects.
The printer was also subjected to extreme cold in the Antarctic at temperatures of negative 52-degrees Celsius, the BMW Motorrad testing team followed in the footsteps of Roald Amundsen, travelling on four BMW R 1200 GS to reach the South Pole on Dec 16, 2017 – exactly 106 years after Amundsen's discovery.
As was the case on Amundsen's own expedition a shelter was erected, in this case symbolically representing the BMW Motorsport tent – with aluminium tent poles produced directly on site using the BMW Motorrad iPart 3D Mobile Printer.
The market launch of the new optional equipment item BMW Motorrad iParts and the BMW Motorrad iPart 3D Mobile Printer will be in September 2018.
