In 2019, the coverage of a 3D printing-enabled bike saddle had a reporter pondering.
Carbon and Fizik had just unveiled the latest success story to come out of Carbon’s Lattice Engine: The Adaptive bike saddle with 3D printed padding, where the energy return properties of Carbon’s EPU 41 material and zonal cushioning characteristics of a lattice structure combined to provide greater comfort to cyclists.
It barely had a chance to prove out its promise when attention was turning to the future.
“Eventually,” a CyclingNews article read, “an in-store system could collect consumers’ pressure-mapping. This data can then be fed back to the 3D printers at the Fizik factory before a completed unit is shipped direct-to-consumer.”
When 3D printing applications hit the press, the imagination tends to stretch its legs, picturing all kinds of digitally automated workflows, processes and practices for the development and production of, for example, personalised goods. What CyclingNews projected back in 2019 has long been one of additive manufacturing’s biggest promises. Most of us have been around these parts long enough to know that they aren’t always fulfilled. But this one was.
Five years on from the launch of the Adaptive bike saddle, Fizik has introduced the One to One saddle – a customised seat engineered to suit the rider’s shape and style. This latest product iteration still leans on Carbon’s 3D printing offering – Fizik operates a Carbon L1 printer – but has added gebioMized, a leader in pressure map data, to the equation too.
The process now sees a pressure sensor mat capture 64 data points pertaining to the rider’s shape, positioning and riding style, with the information being transferred to Carbon through an API in less than an hour. The Carbon Custom Production Software – inclusive of Carbon’s Design Engine – then kicks into gear, gathering the input data and generating a 3D printable file that is sent directly to the print queue of the Carbon L1 machine sitting in Fizik’s factory. Each step of this process – down to the serial number and part tracking – occurs sequentially without the need for operator input.
What arrives with the consumer is a saddle unique to them.
“All of these One to One Fizik saddles have the same volume,” Andrew Sink, an Application Engineer at Carbon, tells TCT. “What we’re doing is we’re modulating the density in different areas, specifically for riders based on that pressure map feedback. There is a very high level of customisation in each saddle based on where you want that zonal density.”
The lattice structure used for Fizik saddles is also unique to this particular project, with the design based on the characteristics of the EPU 41 material. Carbon’s Design Engine software uses this structure as a baseline, with the pressure map dictating where modulations are made to ensure the latticed saddle padding offers different responses in different zones.
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This is important since a soft saddle using the same foam from the nose to the back is counter intuitive. What will likely happen is the rider’s ischial tuberosities (sit bones) will sink through the soft padding, hit the shell and pinch, causing discomfort.
“There are body parts touching the saddle that needs different kind of support,” explains Alex Locatelli, Product Manager at Fizik. “If you are sitting on the ischial bones, then the bones can support more pressure without even noticing. But if you rotate your pelvis on the saddle, and then your soft tissues are squeezing on the saddle, then you can feel pain, numbness, discomfort. And that discomfort could [cause people to] give up cycling.”
Carbon/Fizik
Carbon & Fizik partnered with gebioMized’s to deliver the One to One saddle
The process developed in partnership with Carbon and gebioMized is working to address these issues. Using gebioMized’s sensor mapping technology has allowed Fizik to measure how cyclists generate pressure on the saddle, where that pressure is being generated and how intense the pressure is. That then informs the exact shape and density of the lattice structure that will be incorporated into the saddle’s padding.
“On the ischial bones, the padding is much firmer; you need more stability,” Locatelli says. “But while rotating on the saddle, the padding has become much softer, so you don’t have numbness. The general comfort of the saddle is much better. With this technology, we can be so precise. You can find the right spot where there’s a little bit of unnecessary pressure and then we can compensate for that with the technology.”
Not only can Fizik be precise, but it can also be flexible, quicker and, in theory, hit bigger scales. As far as Fizik can tell, it is the only saddle manufacturer that has access to an in-house 3D printer capable of printing multiple products in a single build, with post-processing carried out overnight and custom products turned around in a couple of weeks.
The success is owed to the upfront work carried out by the automated workflow, which serves to reduce design iterations, validate lattice shapes, and go from printing multiple parts per rider to deliver a repeatable process per saddle.
As Sink explains: “The way this process works is once we have the saddle geometry, and this is the lattice structure that performs a specific way according to some baseline, we have a lattice that we understand and characterise. When we go through the scaffolding and apply the transformations for the custom lattice, the printability of the file doesn’t change. There’s no second iteration required, there’s no print testing, or anything like that. The lattice has been validated, so your custom saddle and my custom saddle, if you look at them, you’d be able to see that they’re different, but when you look very carefully at the lattice structure, you won’t see any defects or broken struts because we’ve already validated the lattice itself.”
What we’re left with is a lighthouse application for Carbon and a dream come true for Fizik. Since work started on 3D printing saddles, the end goal has been to deliver customised products at a price point that won’t deter consumers.
In 2019, one of Locatelli’s first tasks as a member of the Fizik team was to explore the feasibility of 3D printing for bike saddles, procure material and lattice samples from Carbon, and spend a couple of weeks in California to immerse himself in the technology. Five years on, the experts in making saddles and the experts in making lattices have pooled their know-how to turn 3D printing’s promise into a reality.
The Fizik One to One saddle is available for consumers to buy from 25 dealers around the world. And they’re doing so. And they’re coming back for a second. And a third. It is good going for a company just five years into its additive manufacturing journey.
“Back then, it was a bet because the technology was expensive and even if the saddle costs between 300-400 Euros, our margin is basically not as good as the margin we make on standard saddles,” Locatelli says. “But we wanted to test the market and see if the riders would react to this new technology. And we were surprised because the feedback from the market was very, very positive. Some customers order the custom saddle and after a couple of weeks they want another one for another bicycle. Nowadays, 3D printed saddles are the saddles that we sell the most because of the comfort that the technology can provide.”
This article originally appeared inside TCT Europe Edition Vol. 32 Issue 6 and TCT North American Edition Vol. 10 Issue 6. Subscribe here to receive your FREE print copy of TCT Magazine, delivered to your door six times a year.
