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.
Why the blogspam? (Score:5, Informative)
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Re:140 km/hr ? (Score:5, Funny)
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You missed the point where this was a completely electric car.
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1) I drive my shitty little Echo 140km/h on the highway regularly. It's somewhere between 90 and 115 horsepower.
2) Electric cars have been able to hit speeds higher than this since the early 90's
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... but when he looked out the window, he saw they were only moving slowly.
... a dangerous driver who didn't look out of the window all along... especially when (attempting to) drive at speed
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you mean making money off of someone else's work and research - yeah... twat
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Next print a spacecraft (Score:1)
Re:Next print a spacecraft (Score:5, Funny)
Who has the 3d models for an ion drive?
Ionic Breeze?
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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....
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Yep, printing the body is neat, but wake me up when they print the drivetrain.
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Its just the exterior of the car that was printed, not the motor or the wheels or whatever.
Well I'm not that impressed now. 3D printed body panels... oooooo.
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"Its like 3-d printing a computer case, and then having the media report the entire computer was printed, circuit boards and all".
There are people working on that [reprap.org] if you were curious...
=Smidge=
Good Grief... (Score:5, Interesting)
I know this is a silly question, but what exactly is it that these so-called Slashdot "editors" actually do? Given the never ending inaccurate summaries, the summaries with all the grammatical elegance of grade-school assignment, the summaries that are essentially just the first paragraph of the story, the summaries that reference rip-off web blogs designed for noting more than soaking up page views while that actual source is some other web site entirely... What exactly do the "editors" actually do?
Re:Good Grief... (Score:5, Funny)
Editors? Where have you read that we have edit ... wait, damn!
Sorry, that was a mistake. We meant to say this site is run by redditors. We hired an entire team of them. We couldn't get slashcode to actually autosubmit the stories, since our coders are lazy, so we needed some cheap labor to do it. The cheapest we could find was redditors. So essentially we pay them a (very small) salary to go on reddit all day long, taking small breaks to log into /.'s admin panel and randomly approve stories. We are currently teaching very basic english to a group of illegal Mexicans. As soon as they are at the level of our current editors (that is, speaking a grand total of 25 words), we'll replace them, and you'll immediately see a noticeable improvement in the quality of our stories.
So, redditors, sorry for the inconvenience. We just asked our redditors to correct the mistake in our FAQ and change editors to redditors, but they flipped us the bird and went back to /r/gonewild. You'll just have to wait until we get our mexicans ready.
Sincerely,
Kenneth Langone
CEO - Geeknet, Inc.
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Why was this modded funny?
it looks like the mold was 3D printed (Score:2)
Re:slashdot computer analogy (Score:4, Informative)
Except the circuit board is a major functional component of a computer. What was printed was more like the decorative bezel on the front of the case... all the weight and stress bearing components being of more conventional manufacture.
You may not realize it, but racers aren't street cars - racers have frames that carry all the weight/stress.thrust and roll cages that protect the driver. The shell is pretty much decorative.
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And not only that, calling this a "race car" is kind of a joke, too. If you look at it, it's not much bigger than a Kart and definitely not as fast (some of those things can get up to 250+ km/h!)
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3d printed stuff _is_ weak. They took all the components that don't have to be strong and used a 3d printer for them.
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the stereotype of 3-d printed stuff being weak seems to be finally going away....
It's not a monocoque... this bodywork is just bolted onto a steel spaceframe. It's made from a polymer resin, so in some respects you could say 3D printing has caught up making things out of plastic, but there's not a great deal of load on these panels to stress it.
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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....
Its okay to belittle it... only the marketing department at the company selling the printer would consider that much of a savings.
Anyone who has built a car from the ground up will tell you the body is the easy part. And in a car that is a shell-over-space-frame, a non-critical part.
The Areion is not wholly 3D printed but... (Score:2)
the article dances around it but it just sounds like the body shell was 3d printed, so when they say "most of it actually is" they really mean "the biggest part you see is"
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Yeah, I'd argue most of the car wasn't 3-D printed at all, since they didn't print the engine, drive train, or tires. Whether or not the seat was printed is left up in the air.
The fact that it's a tiny race car isn't particularly relevant - it's the size of the print job that's interesting. But really, it's no more impressive than if they'd 3-D printed a dining room table.
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My rule: The bits that you could make out of wood or papier mache don't count when evaluating what proportion was 3d printed.
Bah, this is pointless (Score:5, Funny)
Print me my goddamn flying car that I was promised, then I'll be impressed!
141km/h is nice and al... (Score:1, Troll)
but what suburban American families need is a 6 passenger station wagon/minivan that goes 450 km on a single charge, at speeds ranging from 0 to 120 km/h.
Using batteries that maintain their performance for 10 years (which is how durable modern IC engines are).
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What progress? Electric engines have been done. This is just a damned shell, albeit with some nice features.
Fake headlines to pull you in. Fuck that shit.
Take that MPAA! (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Take that MPAA! (Score:4, Funny)
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If it's not economical, you're not pirating enough. Not enough cars, and not expensive enough cars.
Re:Take that MPAA! (Score:4, Funny)
We'll just store the oil and energy in the cloud. The automotive industry has been ripe for disruption for a long time.
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The funny thing about them saying you wouldn't download a car, is that the design of cars can't be copyrighted.. its an industry where you can copy anything you see design wise.
So its body panels only... (Score:1)
Any crashtest results at 140kph?
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afaik no one crash-tests vehicles at 140 km/h [at least under defined conditions, real-world crash"tests" are a different topic...]
The short wheelbase looks funny (Score:2)
Re:The short wheelbase looks funny (Score:4, Informative)
It's because Formula Student courses are extremely tight and curvy. A shorter wheelbase gives you a smaller rotational inertia, which means you can enter and exit corners faster. This comes at the expense of high speed stability, and indeed most FSAE/FSC cars get quite unstable above 90mph.
On top of that, a shorter car is a lighter car, and every gram counts on a race car.
Group T (Score:2)
the efforts of a 16-person team called "Group T"
Actually Group T is the name of an engineering division of KU Leuven (T=technical). This makes it sound like they made up some team name.
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MF Ratio (Score:3)
Team Photo: 1 Female... 21 Males. Don't girls like composite engineering?
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3D Printing my foot! (Score:1)
3D printers are great (Score:1)
I just wish the smelting furnace wasn't sold separately. Combine the two, and it's off to the races.
"You wouldn't steal a car" (Score:2)
...yeah, but I'd copy their model files and 3D print my own.
you (Score:1)
Fuck yeah I would!
inaccuracies (Score:1)
The blurb is full of inaccuracies. I actually live in the city where this car was created (Leuven - Belgium). "Group T" is a college, not a team.
"Materialise" is not a program, but a company. I can look at their offices from where I work.
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It looks like they have a few specs on their website: http://www.formulagroupt.be/pages/car [formulagroupt.be]
It doesn't mention their cooling system, but often these motors are oil or water cooled and have a radiator.
Almost good enough for a time machine. (Score:1)
Topping out at 87.6133 MPH that's almost enough to make cheap time machines.
Misleading (Score:3)
The frame (welded tubular steel, just like every other car in the competition)
The wheels and tires
The suspension, linkages, and steering
The batteries
The electric motor
The cooling system
The electronics and controls
The driver
What they did use 3D printing for was for the body panels, and probably some complex-shaped internal parts they didn't bother to highlight. But Formula teams have been using 3D-printing for various components (yes, even body panels) for upwards of a decade. Hats off to the team itself - nice car! And a nice big "give me a fucking break" to the submitter, editors, and Materialise PR.
I saw this car yesterday (Score:1)
I live in Leuven, Belgium, where Group T is based, and they were showing off this car yesterday on the street. I didn't stop to look more closely since I've seen similar cars before, but I did wonder how the hell they made the patterned nose cone. It looked to me like it was injection molded, which seemed odd since a mold that big would be insanely expensive. Now I know better!
Would I pirate this car? (Score:2)
Hell yes I would!
Also remember when I said I wanted to 3D print a car's body panels and the responses ranged from "that's probably not a good idea" to "you're an idiot, 3D printing fanboy!" Well I am now engaging my smugface.
Wait, until they can print out ... (Score:1)