3D Printed Car
The latest technology inventions in 3d printing are rapidly changing how
things are being made.
It's an emerging technology that is an alternative to the traditional
tooling and machining processes used in manufacturing.
At the International Manufacturing Technology Show in Chicago, a little
known Arizona-based car maker created a media sensation by manufacturing a car
at the show. It was a full scale, fully functional car that was 3d printed in 44
hours and assembled in 2 days. The video below shows the car being made.
The
latest technology inventions in 3d printing are rapidly changing how things are
being made.
It's
an emerging technology that is an alternative to the traditional tooling and
machining processes used in manufacturing. At
the International Manufacturing Technology Show in Chicago, a little known
Arizona-based car maker created a media sensation by manufacturing a car at the
show. It
was a full scale, fully functional car that was 3d printed in 44 hours and
assembled in 2 days. The video below shows the car being made.
The
car is called a "Strati", Italian for layers, so named by
it's automotive designer Michele Anoè because the entire structure of the car
is made from layers of acrylonitrile butadiene styrene (A.B.S.) with reinforced
carbon fiber into a single unit. The
average car has more than 20,000 parts but this latest technology reduces the
number of parts to 40 including all the mechanical components. “The
goal here is to get the number of parts down, and to drop the tooling costs to
almost zero.” said John B. Rogers Jr., chief executive of Local Motors, a
Princeton and Harvard-educated U.S. Marine. “Cars
are ridiculously complex,“ he added, referring to the thousands of bits and
pieces that are sourced, assembled and connected to make a vehicle. "It's
potentially a huge deal," said Jay Baron, president of the Center for
Automotive Research, noting that the material science and technology used by
Local Motors is derived from their partnership with the U.S. Department of
Energy’s Manufacturing Demonstration Facility at the Oak Ridge National
Laboratory in Oak Ridge,Tennessee. This
technology can use a variety of metal, plastic or composite materials to manufacture
anything in intricate detail. People
tend to want what they want, when they want it, where they want it, and how
they want it, which makes this technology disruptive in the same way digital
technologies used by companies like Amazon and Apple disrupted newspaper, book
and music publishers.
Imagine
if you could customize and personalize your new car online and pick it up or
have it delivered to you the next day at a fraction of the cost of buying one
from a dealership?
What
if you could make a fender for a Porsche, or a tail light for a Honda, for a
fraction of the cost of buying from a parts supplier? How revolutionary would
that be for the automotive industry? It's
already happening. Jay
Leno, the former Tonight Show Host and avid car enthusiast is famous for his
collection of vintage automobiles.
One
of the challenges with collecting antique cars is replacing parts. You can't
buy them because they're obsolete and having a machinist tool the part doesn't
always work and often requires costly modifications until the part fits. So
Leno uses 3d printing technology to make parts for his cars. "These
incredible devices allow you to make the form you need to create almost any
part", says Leno. John
B. Rogers Jr. believes that in the near future a car will be made in just 60
minutes. The
company is already organizing a worldwide network of "Microfactories"
where you can order and pickup your personalized, customized car.
Sources:
localmotors.com; popularmechanics.com
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