PRINTER AND MATERIALS

In terms of geometry, the parts that compose the bike can be printed in FDM printers with a minimum of 200x200x200mm printing volume.

Of course, most of the parts of the chassis must be printed in a rigid material, like PLA, ABS or PetG. If you think your motor is going to get hot, maybe you must choose a rigid mat which supports higher temps than PLA.

But the key of this design is really the rest of the parts, the fairing, which practically wrap completely the chassis, protecting it from external collisions, hits or bounces. You could think about printing these parts in PetG (and I did), as it better deforms in some cases practically recovering initial position, but those parts has been really designed to be printed in TPU to help the bike survive various kinds of hits. Its less flexibility when thick and its great flexibility when thin allows those elements of the body to bend in collisions or simply when manipulating to put on or out some parts. They create a kind of "airbag" around the bike which absorbs with deformation most of the energy of collisions.

In my first driving test, I did not even know if the bike would steer... I could finally experiment with some driving errors making the bike to hit the ground with many of the body parts. Thanks to TPU body, even without the pilot, none of the parts of the bike were damaged, and I could even continue playing after some collisions, but other times I had to fix something simple like un-blocking part of the body with the direction.

If some of the TPU parts are too big for your printer you can probably slice them in 2 parts. If you print the sliced surface over the bed, you will probably be able to glue those 2 parts together quite easy.

Some of the parts of the body already have the right thickness, which would be 1.6mm, four perimeters in total of 0.4mm each. For those parts with a smaller thickness when in correct printing position, I would use "Horizontal Expansion" or similar feature of your slicing software to reach that 1.6mm of total wall thickness. I tested the flexibility of the body parts with this wall thickness and they fit correctly and flex what is needed to allow mounting them over the chassis. As I said, these body parts have been designed to be printed in TPU and then you could need that flexibility.

 

If you take a look to the parts list, you will see a good part of them need supports. Many of these parts resemble the real look of the NSR500 so it was important to maintain their shape. If you print them in the suggested position (the original position when importing the part in your slicer) you will need to use supports just in the beginning of the print, I mean, to support the lower part, but not all the overhangs, as they can be done without supports in a good calibrated FDM printer.

My quick trick adding supports: If your slicer allows it, add automatically supports for overhangs greater than 60º. Set them to only start those supports over the bed. Change the size of the supports to the minimum to ensure they will fit in the narrower zones. Finally, remove manually those supports which suppose "too much work" (in terms of 3d printing) if hey are supporting an overhang but not a starting point.

So please, do not fill everything of supports spending a lot of extra time and money... just those strictly needed.

If you don't find an angle for your part with a plain surface to be a good start but mostly, maybe you can consider "sinking" your part a little into the bed (in the slicer) to have a good first layer.

For example, the big front bike body part... In the suggested position you will see it only contacts the bed in two points. The rest must start over supports. If you want to be sure it won't separate of the bed during the print, you can "sink" this front body part in the slicer bed until you see a good enough first layer sacrificing just a little of detail.

Yes, sacrificing a little of detail is not the best option, but you will have time to re-print this with more detail in the future if you want so... ;)

3D PRINTED PARTS LIST
As in some of my previous projects, the naming I'm using for my files is important and includes the group it belongs to. Anyway, this time I'm sharing the files in a big zip, with folders for the groups so you will find everything easier.

Next you can see the parts grouped and the number of them you need to print

Motor Block Parts

Transmission Parts

Body Parts