A (Mostly) 3-D Printed Race Car Hits 140 Km/h 94
An anonymous reader writes with an excerpt from a story describing the efforts of a 16-person team called "Group T" competing in the Formula Student 2012 challenge. They've created a car called the "Areion," described as the world's first 3D printed race car. "The Areion is not wholly 3D printed but most of it actually is. It was tested on Hockenheim race circuit and
went from zero to 100km/h in just four seconds. Maximum speed Areion achieved on the same circuit was 141km/h."
The car features an electric drive train and bio-composite materials, and was created using a printing system called Materialise.
slashdot computer analogy (Score:5, Insightful)
In honor of it being a slashdot car story, instead of providing the official slashdot car analogy, I'll provide the slashdot computer analogy to the story.
"Its like 3-d printing a computer case, and then having the media report the entire computer was printed, circuit boards and all".
Its just the exterior of the car that was printed, not the motor or the wheels or whatever. This is not to belittle the accomplishment... for 3-d printing that's a very large component to print, and also the stereotype of 3-d printed stuff being weak seems to be finally going away....