Michelin and Hankook Tire have designed and successfully tested airless tires, but BigRep is the first manufacturer that has developed an innovative thermoplastic elastomer for a 3D printing process that allows printing 1:1 full-scale tires made out of a new thermoplastic polyurethane (TPU) filament on a three-layer honeycomb pattern. The tires do not have a pneumatically inflated inner tube. As a result, the tires do not require air pressure eliminating the risk of a tire puncture. The company can design tires for different applications: mountain bike, speedway, city cycling, and rainy weather conditions. Watch YouTube video at: youtu.be/9pHJNtH8ltQ The biggest driver of innovation is the historic improvement in communication among individuals, first with newspapers, radio, TV, and now the Internet, which allows sharing our ideas with others people ideas at a global scale to turn them into something new. The Nomura Research Institute of Japan classified the history of evolution in four main eras: Agricultural, Industrial, Information, and Creativity and defined our time as the Era of Creativity. General Electric (GE) setup in 2014 an international “open innovation” competition to redesign a bracket for aircraft engines. The winner was an Indonesian student. The world is changing so fast because we live in a constantly interconnected planet that fosters the exponential change in our society by the ability to reach out and exchange ideas with another people. |
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