Want to take your bike to the mountainside? It can easily be done simply by printing out the frames and other parts of a bicycle and put it together. British firms -- Renishaw, the U.K.'s only 3D-printing manufacturer, and Empire Cycles, a bicycle design company in the west of England -- come together to create an innovative framework of world's first 3D-printed metal bike.

The collaborative project is based on Empire's MX-6 mountain bike, and the new model has been designed using "topological optimization," which means using software to distribute material in the smartest way possible. According to Renishaw, "material is removed from areas of low stress until a design optimized for load bearing is evolved," so that unneeded material can be eliminated and the bike made lighter.

The frame is printed in titanium alloy out of a 3D-printer, and has been designed to be as light and as strong as possible -- it is hollow with internal strengthening features and is a third lighter than the original, while it boasts a tensile strength of over 900MPa.

The frame, which, when printed, is joined to a metal plate, is broken up and bonded together, which allows for flexible design improvements and the process means that a frame can be tailored to an individual's exact needs.

It is not on sale yet as it is currently in the process of production at Swansea University, which is using strain gauges to measure its performance both in the lab and on mountains.