Full scale, fully operational 3D printed car. | Hacker News Reader

Full scale, fully operational 3D printed car.

develop3d.com

32 pointstimf11 comments

The title here is a little misleading. They didn't create the whole car with a 3D printer. They just used a Stratasys FDM machine (the "3d printer") to make the outer body panels... basically just the outer shell of the car that is painted and polished.

Here is a link to the actual website for the vehicle, instead of the terrible blog write-up: http://www.urbee.net/home/

The misleading title is disappointing, but 3d-printed body panels are still cool - imagine designing your own customized body style and fastening it on! (and/or watching an novice's poorly self-designed body rip apart on the highway)

Is there anyone who actually believes you will be able to print a whole car?

Yes, why wouldn't you? It's just a question of scale.

Looks like the site is down. Where can I download this car?

Here is the link to the real website, instead of the blog: http://www.urbee.net/home/

It's not a full car that is downloadable and printable. It's not at all what the misleading title of this post says.

From their website: >By reducing the maximum speed and acceleration of Urbee compared to what many other cars are capable of, we can dramatically reduce the maximum horsepower required to power our car. The smaller motor/engine size in turn decreases the weight of the vehicle and increases the range.

I think this is great, cars are grossly overpowered and under-optimized for their most common use. I drive a 4500lb V6 truck with a ScanGauge, and cruising along only takes 50hp. Without any figures to back up their eco-marketing, though, I'm a bit worried. There are some slow accelerating cars on the market already. Making an even slower car gets into the territory of "dangerous".

I know they might not be able to release numbers yet, but "our car is slow and doesn't have a lot of power" isn't going to help their marketing if they don't do some explaining besides "power = energy".

God I love the irony. Actually I clicked on the link and saw it was down and thought "The MPAA moves quick."

A few days ago I related a story about 3D printing getting my dad's automotive-industry tool and die engineering shop into some legal troubles with one of their customers who was afraid the printer would allow my dad's company to make parts without needing to use the die maker. Now maybe the engineers can soon just print the car and bypass both the toolers and the automotive company.

It's a lot like making your own circuit boards vs ordering silkscreened boards.

You can pay a couple of bucks and hours to get a single working board. Or, you can pay pennies per board, but you have to get lots of them.

The beauty of a die is you can put it in a big press and stamp out a million of whatever. it's fast too. Seconds per item. With a 3d printer you have to wait, possibly a day, for a single print to complete.

I think, in the short term, your die maker should worry about your dad getting a fancy pants cnc machine to make his own dies.

Yeah, it was a pretty ridiculous suit. The die maker sued the design shop, which happened to be that die maker's only design shop. The die maker went out of business before it got to court when my dad's firm stopped making designs for them.

Here's a short video of their prototype: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2JpIj9IN924

Looks like at least the current prototype uses printed panels on top of a steel spaceframe, so probably "3D printed car body" would be a closer title. :) Still damn cool!

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