Car Produced With a 3D Printer 257
Lanxon writes "A prototype for an electric vehicle — code named Urbee — is the first to have its entire body built with a 3D printer, reports Wired. Stratasys and Winnipeg engineering group Kor Ecologic have partnered to create the electric/liquid fuel hybrid, which can deliver more than 200 miles per gallon on the motorway and 100 miles per gallon in the city."
Re:3D Printers (Score:1, Informative)
The material can be finished (i.e. sanded and polished) to remove the bumps and ridges.
You are correct that this technology is normally used for prototypes - unless your "production" numbers are very low.
* disclosure - I _used_ to work at Stratasys *
Re:Paper car = not smart (Score:5, Informative)
The material used in the stratasys printers is ABS, it's a production grade resin. We have two of these rapid prototyping machines at work, and what they can do is amazing. The biggest problem with these devices is that they have fairly low tolerances usually around .005"(.1mm) and contoured part surfaces are fairly rough. That can be fixed with a little sanding/subtractive machining though.
The capability to think something up and have it in your hands within hours without involving skilled machinists is incredible.
mod parent insightful! (Score:2, Informative)
Re:Misdirected efforts (Score:3, Informative)
Please stop blaming all problems of your aoutomotive industries to 30 year old regulation. Other manufacturers are able to build energy efficient front wheel drive cars with a pretty good performance. If yours don't, blame their lack of innovation.
Oh, and light trucks are probably large and not whimpy, but definately not fast. Which implies "not fun".
Re:why does the picture in the article look like (Score:3, Informative)
Follow the click trail, eventually you get here:
http://www.fastcompany.com/1698943/the-urbee-hybrid-the-first-car-to-have-its-body-3-d-printed
Second image down.
Re:Misdirected efforts (Score:1, Informative)
Trollish, but true. Around here compact cars are the norm and SUVs are quite rare.
I live in Minnesota. We have an extremely harsh climate. As such, the intelligent among us typically have at least one 4x4, if not just to deal with the snow. Living here has given me a huge appreciation of 4x4 vehicles, and particularly ones that weigh 4000lbs+. It's great to be able to get around in 2' of snow without having to shovel, de-ice, and wait for the government to plow the roads. It's also great to, you know, stay on the road when I need to.
Compact cars might have their place, but holy fuck, Minnesota is not that place. IMHO it's jackass treehuggers and pro-green assholes that end up causing the majority of crashes here. Most being caused by people driving compact cars that do not have 4x4 nor enough weight to maintain control, thus leading to many of our roadway crashes and delays.
Two years ago I saw a Smartcar on the highway in mid-January... Shit like that leads me to believe that liberalism actually is a mental disorder.
Re:So it's just a body? (Score:5, Informative)
Don't go thinking that you'll be able to just print replacement parts. 3D printing/reprapping is going to be as encumbered by copyright issues as video and audio is.
It's already completely legal to create knockoff replacement parts and to sell them with information stating their application so long as you do not misrepresent yourself as the company which made the originals, for example by improper use of their logos. This is already done for body parts, sensor/sender units which basically consist of a potentiometer wrapped up in some custom plastic, trim pieces, window seals, glass pieces, and basically every other piece (including interior trim) where there is sufficient demand to create a lookalike.
Or in other words, this problem has already been addressed where it applies to automotive parts, and it is not the issue you claim it to be.
Re:You wouldn't steal a car... (Score:3, Informative)
Re:3D Printers (Score:3, Informative)
Re:Misdirected efforts (Score:4, Informative)
I dunno, I look out in the parking lot of my employer and I see a mixture of vehicles, but the majority of vehicles are what you label "crappy front wheel drive cars". I've been driving a "crappy front wheel drive car" for a number of years now, and it's eliminated the need for 4WD on my crappy front wheel drive cars, because rear-wheel drive blows hot steaming monkey chunks in any kind of snow or slippery conditions without special tires, but I can do quite nicely using stock 4-season radial tires on my crappy front wheel drive car.
Meanwhile, most of the vehicles I see stuck in snowbanks are large RWD sedans and powerful 4WD SUVs, even though the majority of cars on the road are crappy front wheel drive cars. Why is that, I wonder?
Look, I drove rear-wheel drive cars for a long time, and resisted the switch to front-wheel-drive for years. But as soon as I got into one, I understood why it made sense. I had to re-learn how to handle slippery conditions, but a couple of hours in an abandoned snowy parking lot sorted that issue out, and I was good to go. All of my rear-wheel-drive cars have been garbage in the snow, and/or have been 4WD or AWD capable. I haven't run into any circumstances where front-wheel-drive can't perform acceptably unless the snow is high enough that my car high-centers on it, and at that point all bets are off anyway and I need the ground clearance of my truck.
I want a practical and fun car. I own a pickup truck, but that's only because I need one for plowing and homestead maintenance tasks, and for cases when the snow is too deep for any car but I still have to get to work. My practical and fun car is a crappy front wheel drive car, for very practical and fun values of "crappy".
To each his own, but the majority of people I know have chosen "slow, cramped and wimpy go-carts", also known as "5-passenger, 4-cylinder, front-wheel-drive sedans capable of 35+ MPG" for their daily driving. These aren't just hippies, or at least the guys with the Limbaugh mugs on their desks might be offended if you called them that. Be my guest, but just understand that it might get violent.
It's all about the Benjamins. If I can get to work in my current 40MPG car that performs well in the snow, why would I choose a heavy, lumbering, horrible-in-the-snow beast that only gets 20MPG? I drive 16 miles each way to work, every day. That's 160 miles a week. I can do that on about 4 gallons of fuel in my current car, including my three carpoolers, or I can do it on 8 gallons of fuel a week. Hey, at almost $3 a gallon, that's nearly twelve bucks a week I'm saving in fuel using my crappy little front wheel drive car, not to mention the fact that my car was $20,000 and my tires are $75 a pop and my maintenance is very cheap, so I'm saving shitloads more money than just fuel. Sure, my engine (Diesel) only produces 90 HP. Who cares? There's plenty of power to merge on the highway, passing is no problem (drop a gear, spin up the hamsters, and go), and I only stop by the fuel station about once a month.
Putting the drive up front makes sense for daily driving. There are cars available with modern semi-efficient engines and rear-wheel-drive systems, the reason people have by and large converted to crappy front-drive is because it's cheaper to manufacture, more efficient, and for any sort of bad weather pretty much eliminates the need for expensive and complex AWD/4WD systems.
Re:They could actually confirm the Golf dimple (Score:3, Informative)
The dimples help by adding energy to the boundary layer when the airflow is transitioning from laminar to turbulent. The point is to keep the airflow from becoming detached. If you know what those terms mean, then go beat up your car in very specific areas to make it ugly as hell, and it will perform ever so slightly better under very constrained test conditions. Otherwise, it will just make the car ugly. For the most part though, cars don't travel fast enough to make boundary layer aerodynamics a significant factor until the separation at the rear.