TECH BREAKDOWN: 3D BY EK CHAINS

Let’s talk about something nobody thinks about until it snaps, skips, or slaps the swingarm loud enough to wake the camp: the drive chain. Get it wrong, and the entire weekend can go sideways fast. EK Chains has thrown a serious piece of engineering into this space with their new ‘Three-D’ chain range.

The new 520MXR, 520RV and 525/530 L-Series bring the full suite of 3D manufacturing technology to the performance motorcycle segment. Spend five minutes talking to a race mechanic about what they actually want from a chain, you’ll quickly realise EK has been listening to everything they have to say.

WHAT IS ‘3D’?

3D is EK’s own precision forged technology and once you understand what it actually means, you’ll look at a drive chain very differently. It refers to the cold-forging technology applied to every plate in the chain.

Most chain plates are stamped and punched out of flat steel sheets, but EK’s process is very different. Cold-forging shapes the steel under enormous pressure without heat, which aligns the grain structure of the metal at a molecular level. The result is an intricate plate that’s stronger, lighter, and more precisely formed than anything a stamp press produces. That’s where the name comes from – three dimensions of engineered geometry, not two.

Chamfered Outer Plates

The outer plate is not just cold-forged but every edge is chamfered, meaning the sharp corners are deliberately bevelled off. This isn’t just cosmetic, as sharp edges are stress concentration points, and those points can be where fatigue cracks begin. Remove the sharp edge, and you remove the weakest point in the plate. The chamfered outer plate also sits flush and smooth against your chain guide, reducing the friction that gradually eats both components.

Chamfered Inner Plate

The same principle applied inside the chain. The inner plates live in a harder world as they are constantly articulating under load, flexing through every sprocket tooth engagement. Coldforging makes them tougher. Chamfering the edges keeps them from cracking under the kind of repeated high-load cycling that enduro and motocross demands.

CRH Treated Pins

EK’s exclusive CRH treatment gives the pin an extremely hard outer coating wrapped around a deliberately softer core. The Chromium Carbide surface coating resists the kind of abrasive wear that stretches chains and kills sprockets – mud, water, and everything else that’s thrown at an off-road chain.

520MXR Flat-Plate Edge Finish

This is the detail that factory mechanics noticed first. The contact edge of each plate (the surface that rides against your chain slider and guide) is precision-formed completely flat – not rounded, not rough, not left as-forged. The flat surface distributes contact load evenly, dramatically reducing friction and heat compared to a conventional chain plate edge.

Less friction means less wear on your slider. Less heat means less wear on the chain itself. Over the course of a race, a season, or a full training block, that adds up to a component that simply lasts longer and runs cleaner. Put all three together and you’ve got a chain built around the idea that geometry matters just as much as material. Which, as it turns out, it absolutely does.

The new 520MXR, 520RV and 525/530 L-Series bring the full suite of 3D manufacturing technology to the performance motorcycle segment. EK Chains are proudly imported & distributed by A1 Accessory Imports. Three-D by EK is available now at all good Australian dealer and retailers.