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3D Printed Car Is Nearing Production
- martinced 14y agoTFA mentions "Easy reproduction" as a feature. Only printing the body takes... 2500 hours. So one printer can create a body in... 105 days! So if this was to scale to, say, 100 000 cars per year one would need 30 000 printing machines. That would be quite a huge factory and it begs the question: who's going to produce the printers? (and how?)
- quesera 14y agoIf the rest of the economics works out, I'm pretty sure the production of 30k printing machines would take care of itself.
- Drakim 14y agoCan these industrial 3d-printers print themselves? 30 000 is nothing if you have exponential growth. But more seriously, I guess the speed could increase over time as the technology is improved, and unlike human workers these could run overnight?
- JoeAltmaier 14y agoTo be fair compare it with how long it takes to make a traditional car.
- ars 14y agoAbout 1 day or even less. And they can do hundreds at the same time.
- akmiller 14y agoTo be fair, this is using a very early technology in a new way. I'm sure if their plans work out, then the speed of production can be reduced, whether it's through customized 3D printers specific to this use case or by other means. I wouldn't knock it just because the numbers are high this early in the development lifecycle.
- maeon3 14y agoWhat would impress me is an entire car, made stem to stern from 3d printers, even if it took a year using Titanium 3d printers and plastic 3d printers. Also he would probably make more waves/growth if he were to print up things like all-plastic parts for the Honda accord and sell it to local garages for 1/100th of the price.
- graeham 14y agoThe title is extremely misleading, as the structural parts of the car are meant to be made of a metal tube frame, quote from article: "The design puts a tubular metal cage around the driver, “like a NASCAR roll cage,” Kor claims. And he also mentioned the possibility of printed shock-absorbing parts between the printed exterior and the chassis. " Interesting demonstration of the technology, but if you want a light, non-structural body, carbon fibre (or even fibreglass if worried about cost) would almost certainly be cheaper and faster to produce.
- snogglethorpe 14y ago> The title is extremely misleading, as the structural parts of the car are meant to be made of a metal tube frame It sounds sort of like a classic fiberglass kit-car... IIRC, those things were often essentially cool-looking fiberglass shells on top of dune-buggy-like tubular frames.
- jere 14y agoIt's always the same damn thing with guns. Headlines talk about 3D printed firearms, but then when you actually read the article, the entire extent of the worry is "eventually hobbyists hope to print almost an entire component with a 3D printer." Shudder.
- Shivetya 14y agoIts not a real car so don't call it one. Until it passed actual crash tests I don't are how much weight savings they claim to have. I am impressed that someone took 3d printing this far, it shows the many uses traditional automakers will be able to derive from it, mostly on the component sides. There is no reason dash assemblies could not be done this for current makers other that costs and and that printing time. You can bet they have or are looking into such technologies. There are many tricks to forming car bodies in steel that allow for variances of thickness and such. Hot form steel manufacturing being introduced now allows for thinner and stronger stamped steel parts; essentially a water cooled press. So while its neat, its not a car, yet.
- sopooneo 14y agoMy understanding is that 3-D printing is still only optimal for prototyping. Once you get into production of any size, traditional methods are much cheaper per unit.
- guizzy 14y agoIt depends; 3D printing can be optimal for goods that are built to order (where having a mold for a one-off custom order would be a waste).
- curtis 14y agoI can't help but wonder if it in some cases it will make sense to 3D print the mold.
- jonhohle 14y agoThe Rapid Prototyping Center at MSOE has several patents around creating mold casts with 3D printers. IIRC, one of their techniques allows building a tetra lattice coolant path around the part cavity, allowing more optimal cooling than traditional methods (increasing water turbulence, getting closer to the cavity face). They weren't printing the tools directly, but the tools could be made from the parts they generated. That was about a decade ago, so I'm sure they've moved onto more exciting things.
- yareally 14y agoHalf the weight is not always a good thing. Good for fuel efficiency, but anyone that has ever passed a semi truck in the opposite direction while driving a small car has probably felt the force of it push against your car. Heavy winds can also make it somewhat difficult to drive as well. There's other safety concerns, but those have already been mentioned.
- alexhawdon 14y agoA legitimate concern, but I wonder if it could be mitigated these days by some clever electronics sensing and compensating for this type of effect?
- regularfry 14y agoThe question is how you'd compensate. I don't know of any widely-deployed variable-strength suspension. There is tech around to do it, but I don't think it's generally available. I'm guessing you wouldn't want to do it with the steering or brakes...
- bryans 14y agoI know nothing about anything on this subject, but could adding downforce (thereby adding friction/grip between the tires and road) help compensate for crosswind? If yes, then surely there must be some reasonable way for a front-end and rear wing mechanism to automatically adjust to create extra downforce during short bursts of crosswinds.
- maxerickson 14y agoGM started shipping one in Cadillacs 10 years ago and uses it somewhat more these days: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MagneRide http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MagneRide
- regularfry 14y agoCoincidentally about when I got out of the car-making business :-)
- ebbv 14y agoPlastic body panels over a metal tube frame are nothing new, and doing them with a 3D printer is just a gimmick. TVR made cars with tubular frames and fiberglass bodies for decades. And these were full on cars, not 3 wheeled toys.
- meaty 14y agoYes and fiberglass or even carbon fibre takes one hell of a lot less time to put together as well. TVRs spontaneously combust as well thanks to the fiberglass which is rather flammable.
- oneandoneis2 14y ago> TVRs spontaneously combust Citation needed. IME, TVR's break down long before they get hot enough to combust.
- meaty 14y agoGoogle images "tvr fire" True! My cousin bought one and it broke down on the forecourt.
- ynniv 14y agoTVRs spontaneously combust as well thanks to the fiberglass which is rather flammable. As do the latest Ferraris[1], so I wouldn't knock TVR too much. [1 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ferrari_458_Italia#Wheel-arch_adhesive_fires https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ferrari_458_Italia#Wheel-arch_...]
- hmottestad 14y agoWould be so cool if you could go to your local shop and they could print you a new fender. Though I guess those kinds of printers are really expensive and take days to complete a fender. So I guess for a long while you'll have to have a central location do all the printing. Which defeats the whole point really.
- deleted 14y ago[deleted]
- frozenport 14y agoHypothesis: these folks made their prototype the same way everybody makes their prototype, and sold it to Wired as novel by describing a standard industrial machine as one of those 3D printer all the cool kids want.
- btipling 14y agoUntil this company has reached the size required to hire enough lawyers to easily squash wrongful death suits with intimidation and endless court appeals on a regular basis I doubt I will feel safe enough to ride in one.
- Mordor 14y agoThis sounds great - can't wait to print one for myself :-)
- jdietrich 14y agoEveryone involved in this should be ashamed of themselves. The machine pictured is a Stratasys Fortus 900MC, which costs $379,900. An annual lease on a machine of this type is usually about a fifth of its purchase cost, so let's be generous and call it $70,000 per year. Each body therefore costs about $20,000 in machine time alone, before you factor in the cost of materials and the not-inconsiderable amount of finishing that an FDM part requires once it comes off the machine. There's nothing magical about 3d printing, so we could just as easily injection-mold these parts in exactly the same ABS plastic at a tiny fraction of the cost. There'd be no point, because ABS is a terrible material for car bodies. Car bodies are largely stiffness-critical structures. In most practical materials, they're much stronger than they need to be once you've made them sufficiently stiff. That's why carbon composite is such an excellent material for performance cars - it's immensely stiff. You don't need to be an engineer to know that ABS plastic isn't very stiff. The whole thing is hokum, absolute hokum.
- TylerE 14y agoI agree with most of what you said, but 3d printing DOES allow shapes that you couldn't easily injection mold, such as undercuts and ridges, and you also wouldn't have the requirement for some degree of draft angle for mold/part seperation.
- jonhohle 14y agoWith the exception of SLS type machines (lasers which melt powder) or Z-corp machine (powder with applied binder) many under cuts will require additional support structures to help bear the weight of the part during construction which require manual removal after the fact. Cleverly orienting the structure can help in some cases, but not all. For example, you could create a hollow sphere because you always have a counterweight, but an upright arch would require some scaffold. The scaffolds are usually easily removed (made of a different material then the main structure), but still require manual removal.
- erikpukinskis 14y agoI'm not an Engineer, but aren't there limitations on what kinds of shapes you can injection mould? Different limitations than those on 3d printing? For example you could 3d print a closed cell ABS foam-like structure, or honeycomb, which would be lighter than a solid plastic part of equivalent strength.
- lutusp 14y ago> 3-D Printed Car Is as Strong as Steel ... This is simply false. If a plastic 3D print were "as strong as steel", then we could print an entire gun that would fire more than one round. But we can't, because what comes out of plastic 3D printers is not remotely "as strong as steel". The title is hype, not reporting.
- geon 14y agoThe article itself isn't even saying that. It mentions the bumpers, but they don't need to be strong. Actually, the best bumpers imho are the flexible plastic ones that just plop back out if someone bump into it ar the parking lot.
- lutusp 14y ago> The article itself isn't even saying that. If the title says it, it doesn't matter what the article says. My objection is to the title, and to the sleazy journalistic practice of promising something in the title that can't be supported by the article. "Cancer Finally Cured!" -> "researchers report modest progress in alleviating melanoma in cockroach fingernails." (just an example, not real) "Marijuana use leads to psychosis" -> "marijuana use correlated with a higher rate of psychosis" (this actually happened recently, multiple examples, but correlation is not causation) Link: "http://www.betterhealth.vic.gov.au/bhcv2/bhcarticles.nsf/pages/Cannabis_and_psychosis http://www.betterhealth.vic.gov.au/bhcv2/bhcarticles.nsf/pag... Quote: "Cannabis use can cause drug-induced psychosis, trigger the first episode of a psychotic illness, or make a pre-existing psychotic illness worse." It's entirely false, of course. There is no scientific evidence to support these claims. It's a classic case that confuses correlation with causation.
- geon 14y ago> If the title says it, it doesn't matter what the article says. That was my point. The article title is sensationalistic without even the article itself supporting it.
- mtgx 14y agoIt's a good thing we don't have patents on most of what cars are made of today.
- ars 14y agoInteresting how he wants to install a diesel engine, but run it on pure ethanol, and it has an electric motor too for good measure. (But no mention of batteries apparently.) Seems like he's trying to mention every buzzword possible, even if they contradict. Also, how do you repair it if it's all one piece?
- ctdonath 14y agoCan anyone acknowledge that it's friggin' amazing they've gotten this far with stereolithography? Yeah, it's an expensive machine which takes a long time to crank out one instance of an object, and requires some non-"printable" components (hey, they're not printing the engine yet!), but really: they've gone from "impossible" to "push button and wait, some assembly required", from making small chincy toys to major fractions of a car. Printer costs too much? prices come down. Long production time? machines get faster. Materials not strong enough? they're getting stronger. Sorry if the future will be here next Tuesday instead of today.
- 1010011010 14y agoOne wheel in the front, like a Reliant Robin? I worry about the turning stability.
- jacquesm 14y agohttp://www.frogheart.ca/wp-content/uploads/2012/08/WOW-Urbee-in-2011_2.bmp http://www.frogheart.ca/wp-content/uploads/2012/08/WOW-Urbee... The single wheel is in the back.
- arethuza 14y agoLike the Morgan? http://www.morgan3wheeler.co.uk/home.html http://www.morgan3wheeler.co.uk/home.html
- youngtaff 14y agoNot quite sure what advantages this approach has over composite based moulded panels? Of course carbon fibre is the composite of choice at the moment and it's relatively expensive but surely that will change.
- regularfry 14y agoNo moulds, primarily, and the fact that your build sequence for every single plastic part is identical.
- ph0rque 14y agoTo that end, they should hire the guys behind the WikiSpeed car (http://www.wikispeed.com http://www.wikispeed.com) as consultants. Their carbon fiber✝ costs them $800 to make. ✝Sorry, I'm an American.
- youngtaff 14y agoDon't worry about the language, I live in a transatlantic world! Wish British english would adopt more American spellings - try explaining to a dyslexic child why label and table end differently!
- ph0rque 14y agoUrbee2 and OrganicTransit's ELF (http://www.organictransit.com/order.html http://www.organictransit.com/order.html) need to marry and have a baby.
- rorrr 14y ago"Strong as steel". I strongly doubt.
- ohwp 14y agoTo take some doubt away: http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2012/06/120607141644.htm http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2012/06/120607141644.ht...
- rorrr 14y agoI don't doubt there are all kinds of new materials out there stronger than steel, but the article clearly states that he uses "ABS plastic via Fused Deposition Modeling", which is a different material and a different process.
- graeham 14y agoABS plastic is a very common hard plastic. Its the stuff used in Lego bricks [1], for instance. [1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Acrylonitrile_butadiene_styrene http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Acrylonitrile_butadiene_styrene
- Ntrails 14y agoSo treading on the car in bare feet is definitely a no-no, but that doesn't particularly support the stronger than steel claim.
- DucktourDreams 14y agoFrom that same page: >ABS plastic is damaged by sunlight. This caused one of the most widespread and expensive automobile recalls in US history.
- rorrr 14y agoABS is not even close to steel, especially good steel. | ABS | Steel ---------------------------+-------+------------------ Compressive strength (PSI) | 6,750 | 16,000 - 70,000 Tensile Strength (PSI) | 6,500 | 36,000 - 115,000 (for stress-proof steel) http://www.machinist-materials.com/comparison_table_for_plastics.htm http://www.machinist-materials.com/comparison_table_for_plas...