Supreme Motors produces UNA Wheel — an electric drive that turns wheelchair into a self-propelled device that allows driving a long distance. The original part is from steel but it’s too expensive to manufacture it in small batches, every unit costs about 100 EUR.
The alternative was found: the new part was 3D-printed from high-performance plastic, Ultem. It has become 5 times lighter, cheaper and the most important — the company can manufacture the fixtures themselves without spending resources for working with the third-party companies. However, the part from Ultem failed stress tests being not enough durable.
That’s how Supreme Motors has come to anisoprinting. The fixture from PETG plastic reinforced with Composite Carbon Fiber (CCF) was printed via Anisoprint Composer continuous fiber 3D printer.
The part withstood 117kg dynamic load being 7 times lighter and 3 times cheaper than the steel one. The company has got the opportunity to print more durable parts with the 4 hours of production time instead of 48 hours.
"The Composer prints unique parts! 7 times lighter with the functions of our prototype part. Ultem failed. […]We want to print long parts combined with Nylon".
— Nikolay Yudin, founder of Supreme Motors.
