Arevo Superstrata
Carbon fibre 3D printing company Arevo has announced it has fulfilled 96% of the orders for its 3D printed Superstrata-branded custom carbon fibre bikes and e-bikes.
Arevo launched its Indiegogo crowdfunding project in 2020, just before the Covid pandemic hit, with 7 million USD in donations raised. In total, 3,301 custom 3D printed bikes and e-bikes have been produced for 2,858 backers at Superstrata’s facilities in Vietnam.
The company says that during the pandemic, 150 factory workers and professional staff volunteered to move into the factory for three months to ensure production commenced and continued. Arevo says it ‘harnessed the power of additive manufacturing’ for continuous improvement without retooling – the weight and quality was said to improve with every batch. Feedback from early backers led to the e-bike’s frame weight to just 1.5kg before the battery, motor and other components are added.
“When we started this journey more than two years ago, we expected fulfilment to take months, not years,” commented Arevo CEO Sonny Vu. “We never imagined our campaign would receive 72 times the support we expected – or that a global pandemic, war, and economic downturn would follow. Today’s outcome was only possible because of our backers faithful support and our team members’ unstoppable commitment.
“It’s almost laughable that we applied our industrial 3D printing technology to a consumer product category with which we had no experience, but doing so battle-tested our processes in ways we never thought necessary. Whether our next frontier is aerospace, defence, or an emerging category that has yet to be named, one thing is certain: few things could me more complex than manufacturing a bike in 2021.”
Arevo has said its carbon fibre technology is now ready for its next application.
