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Car Produced With a 3D Printer
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."
You wouldn't steal a car.
But would you download one?
I wrote parts of this stuff
Don't discount it. Once the technology improves, this could be a way of making less expensive, much stronger bodies for vehicles. You could then put whatever engine/suspension you wanted under them.
It could provide the opposite approach taken by the Trexa EV.
Living With a Nerd
why does the picture in the article look like a still from a low rez video of a photograph of a badly-photoshopped computer rendering?
i could live a little longer in this prison
Once the technology improves, this could be a way of making less expensive, much stronger bodies for vehicles.
Not sure about that, but am certain that it would simplify life for repairmen. It took about three weeks to obtain a mysterious minor little trim piece by the front grill for my wife's Toyota about a year ago. (the bracket-y thing by the fog lights ish area) Life would be a lot simpler if you could just print a replacement.
"Science flies us to the moon. Religion flies us into buildings." - Victor Stenger
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.
As a threat to interstate commerce? Kinda like telling the farmers they can't grow their own animal feed? If you think that self publishing artists are a threat to the industry, wait until you have everybody self replicating everything they need.
For justice, we must go to Don Corleone
No. For that you would need a 4D printer.
Technoli
Naw, we can just torrent the part specs from Car-PirateBay.com and get em for free. Additionally the torrented parts have stripped out the DRM that requires the printer to use substandard plastics and intentionally place flaws and weak spots in the printing pattern to ensure a frequent replacement rate.
But then the AMIAA (Automobile Manufacturing Industry Association of America) will start suing random VIN numbers hoping to catch part-pirates.
I'm too lazy to compose a creative sig.
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.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
Well, I think transcending irony is the most important issue. :-) ... irony. :-)"
http://www.pdfernhout.net/recognizing-irony-is-a-key-to-transcending-militarism.html
"There is a fundamental mismatch between 21st century reality and 20th century security thinking. Those "security" agencies are using those tools of abundance, cooperation, and sharing mainly from a mindset of scarcity, competition, and secrecy. Given the power of 21st century technology as an amplifier (including as weapons of mass destruction), a scarcity-based approach to using such technology ultimately is just making us all insecure. Such powerful technologies of abundance, designed, organized, and used from a mindset of scarcity could well ironically doom us all whether through military robots, nukes, plagues, propaganda, or whatever else... Or alternatively, as Bucky Fuller and others have suggested, we could use such technologies to build a world that is abundant and secure for all. So, while in the past, we had "nothing to fear but fear itself", the thing to fear these days is ironcially
But copyright might come second? :-)
http://www.pdfernhout.net/open-letter-to-grantmakers-and-donors-on-copyright-policy.html
http://www.pdfernhout.net/on-funding-digital-public-works.html
http://groups.google.com/group/gnu.misc.discuss/msg/1e499c6db59117a2?hl=en&
A 21st century issue: the irony of technologies of abundance in the hands of those still thinking in terms of scarcity.
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.
"This post contains words, known to the State of California to cause thought. Wash brain thoroughly after reading."
That not funny. That's a very prophetic. Such a scenario is the future! We live in a world where Intellectual property is worth more in man hours than raw materials themselves.
Life is not for the lazy.
Exactly! And the next thing you know the RIAA will be cracking down on people pirating cars over torrents and printing them at home.
"To prevent this day from getting any worse, I'll just read ERROR as GOOD THING" 1GJU8xLuDKDxEs4KLf8fAGyptoDsqvEsBT