Marklouis

Local Motors 3D-printed cars could lead an American manufacturing revolution

"Produced from a new fiber-reinforced thermoplastic strong enough for use in an automotive application, the chassis and body without drivetrain, wheels and brakes weighs a scant 450 pounds and the completed car is comprised of just 40 components"


Local Motors wants to change the way America makes things. In fact, it already has.

The Phoenix-based automotive and industrial design and manufacturing outfit was one of the pioneers of cloud-based co-creation, where members of a 150,000-member strong online community submit and refine ideas for products, dramatically speeding up the process.


Founded in 2007, its first project was the Rally Fighter, a high-speed off-roader built from a mix of original parts and off-the-shelf components that’s manufactured in small numbers at what Local Motors calls a microfactory. Each vehicle it produces is an updated version of the one before it.

Since then, the company has branched out into a variety of projects, from electric bikes to home appliances and a military vehicle prototype developed in just four and a half months.
That last one shouldn’t be a surprise. The company’s CEO, Jay Rogers, is a Princeton and Harvard-educated U.S. Marine, a veteran of the Iraq War with a clear vision for how to get things done effectively and efficiently, while always leaving room for improvement.

Now the company is taking that idea to the next level, one layer of extruded plastic at a time.
Its latest vehicle is a 3D-printed electric sports car designed by a community member from Italy. It’s currently being honed before one is printed on location in September at the International Manufacturing Technology Show in Chicago.
Called the Strati, it’s a collaboration of Local Motors, industrial parts shaping specialist Cincinnati Incorporated and the Oak Ridge National Laboratory, where a custom printer was created for the car.

Produced from a new fiber-reinforced thermoplastic strong enough for use in an automotive application, the chassis and body without drivetrain, wheels and brakes weighs a scant 450 pounds and the completed car is comprised of just 40 components, a number that gets smaller with every revision.
Fewer parts can mean fewer problems. Rogers says the minimalist machine is rock solid and squeak free.

Things like wring brackets and channels are built right in; the first example was printed in just 40 hours and took two technicians only three days to assemble. Compare that to a team of seven working around the clock for 45 days on the first Rally Fighter, which relied on more traditional construction methods.
Rogers hopes to cut the printing time almost in half by September, and to 2.4 hours within a year. He believes the entire manufacturing process can be reduced to one hour in the future.
But it could potentially be much less than that. While the current technology extrudes about 12 pounds of plastic per hour, Rogers says the experimental limit is 1,000 times as fast.

“If this works, even a little,” he says, “it will reform parts or all of the industry.”
While this undertaking is perfectly-suited to Local Motors’ small scale manufacturing model, Rogers sees no reason that it can’t be scaled up to work on a mass production level once the speed is increased. Several of the shipping container-sized printers could pump out constantly evolving cars by the thousands.
Or on demand.

Tapping into his military mind, Rogers envisions the printers being deployed with troops into the field to produce disposable vehicles, each finely tuned for a specific mission. It would eliminate waiting for much-needed equipment, and parts could be recycled or repurposed when the vehicles are no longer needed.
“People in the know are familiar with the massive overhead required by traditional manufacturing,” Rogers says. “[The Strati] is an experiment to prove this method works. If we can do it, there's no reason why we shouldn’t be doing it.”

• 
  
  
• 
  
  
• 
  Cincinnati Industries
  
  
  
• 
  

• 
  
  

Marklouis

http://gearheads.org/full-size-shelb...on-3d-printer/

Full-size Shelby Cobra Made on 3D Printer

3D printers have enormous capabilities, but who would have thought you could build a Shelby Cobra with that process. No doubt that 3D printers are the coolest thing going right now, whether it’s for industry or just playing around with in the garage, everyone wants one. But who knew one could produce a car?

The folks from the Oak Ridge National Laboratory, the largest US Department of Energy science and energy laboratory, unveiled their 3D printer-made Shelby Cobra at the North American International Auto Show in Detroit earlier this year The good folks in ORNL selected the Shelby Cobra as their subject as the real Shelby Cobra celebrates its 50th anniversary. Oh yeah, and it’s the only car to ever be voted a national monument (which you must admit is way cool).

The Shelby was printed using 20% carbon fiber reinforced ABS material and has a Class A final surface finish through machining, sanding, and polishing. . The final vehicle can in at an astonishingly lite 1400 pounds, 500 pounds of which are printed parts comprised of 20 percent of carbon fiber according to the ORNL. The design provides and opportunity for integrated components to be tested and enhanced in real time, improving digital manufacturing in the automotive manufacturing industry.

The team took six weeks to design, manufacture and assemble the Shelby, including 24 hours of print time. The new BAAM system, jointly developed by ORNL and Cincinnati Incorporated, can print components 500 to 1000 times faster than today’s industrial additive machines. ORNL researchers say the speed of next-generation additive manufacturing offers new opportunities for the automotive industry, especially in prototyping vehicles, according to the ORNL.


Cincinnati, the manufacturer of the BAMM describes the process as “3D printing or Additive manufacturing is a process of making a three-dimensional solid object of virtually any shape from a digital model. 3D printing is achieved using an additive process, where successive layers of material are laid down in different shapes. 3D printing is also considered distinct from traditional machining techniques, which mostly rely on the removal of material by methods such as cutting or drilling (Subtractive processes).”

OK, here’s an interesting backstory. In early 1942, the Army Corps of Engineers snatched 59,000-acres to develop the ORNL as one of three sites of the Manhattan Project developing the atomic bomb. About 3000 residents received court orders to vacate within weeks the homes that their families had occupied for generations. Thousands of scientists, engineers, and workers swarmed into Oak Ridge to build and operate three huge facilities that would change the history of the region and the world forever.

Hoovey689

iTrader: (16)

Wow that is hot

__

Ford among some other Makes is incorporating something similar for rapid prototyping and low volume production.

https://www.clublexus.com/forums/car...echniques.html

Marklouis

< thanks for posting pic, could not get the article to replicate properly from the phone.

this fairly new tech is changing the production avenue for not just cars but so many other products as well. I'm purchasing a 3D printer sometime this year for the office just to experiment with.

Looking forward to cheaper, lighter and stronger materials using this method.

Hoovey689

iTrader: (16)

Yup no problem.

Yeah a friend of mine has one. It's awesome. So far he's made one of those 3D puzzles that fit into the shape of a cube. And a few little things like a phone holder etc..

JDR76

Indeed, I work in aerospace and we are already installing 3D printed parts in our planes. Saving major tooling dollars and finding it's very easy to optimize parts. Love it!

GSteg

iTrader: (15)

SpaceX is already playing with 3D printed parts (metal) and the material strength is surprising good. No doubt 3D printed parts will appear on mass-production cars in the future. Since it's an additive process, you're not wasting as much material.

My printer takes ages to print a tiny piece. I can't imagine printing a chassis in an hour!

Need4Speed

This is going to be amazing.....!!

Taking it to a new level...

spwolf

3D printers are awesome for low volume stuff, like prototyping... not for actual mass production parts, they are way more expensive/slower then mass production.

they will definitely make car engineering much faster though.

Marklouis

3D printing will improve exponentially along with the software programs that are developed for it. For prototypes you can run real world structural testing in a virtual environment that can later translate into superior parts instantly with 3D printing.

For mass production using 3D printing you would implement a system of large beds facing each other lined with tens of thousands of tiny material producing nozzles (like pixels in a T.V.) that could produce multiple smaller parts or large parts within seconds or minutes. Would almost look like a giant waffle iron

This would be a very expensive piece of tech that's still a few years out of reach for most mass production companies, unless your DARPA

GSteg

iTrader: (15)

Like Mark said above, mass production can be achieved if you have a large bed with lots of nozzles printing many parts at the same time. This is going to be way bigger than your average desktop printer.

spwolf

oh, it is certainly possible... just not cost effective...