Headmade Materials enables high-end titanium pedals for bikes
Headmade Materials GmbH, Würzberg, Germany, has collaborated with Titanum GmbH, Hamburg, to produce lightweight titanium clipless bike pedals. Through the use of Headmade Materials’ Cold Metal Fusion Additive Manufacturing process, the journey from initial contact between businesses to final design has taken only six months.
Rico de Wert, co-founder of Titanum, had been working on the design for the clipless pedals for a number of years, but technical feasibility and high-cost manufacturing have held the project back. Matthias Sharvogel, CEO of titanium specialists Element 22 GmbH, based in Kiel, Germany, brought Titanum and Headmade Materials together in mid-2020, a successful partnership that has resulted in bringing the new MyTi clipless pedals to market.
The sinter-based Cold Metal Fusion technology, developed at Headmade Materials, uses a titanium feedstock that can be processed on widely available standard polymer SLS systems. Once the green part is built, it is debound and sintered to obtain a fully-dense metal part.
Following the production of the first prototype, where the performance was said to be outstanding, only a few details were changed before the patent was filed. The pedals have since been tested and found suitable for both mountain bike and road use by bike specialists such as Ralf Holleis at Huhn Cycles and Tom Sturdy from Sturdy Cycles.
