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A (Mostly) 3-D Printed Race Car Hits 140 Km/h

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.

8 of 94 comments (clear)

  1. Why the blogspam? by allanw · · Score: 5, Informative
  2. slashdot computer analogy by vlm · · 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....

    --
    "Science flies us to the moon. Religion flies us into buildings." - Victor Stenger
  3. Bah, this is pointless by sribe · · Score: 4, Funny

    Print me my goddamn flying car that I was promised, then I'll be impressed!

  4. Take that MPAA! by tommituura · · Score: 5, Funny

    Very soon now, I WILL download a car!

  5. Re:Next print a spacecraft by Sulphur · · Score: 4, Funny

    Who has the 3d models for an ion drive?

    Ionic Breeze?

  6. Good Grief... by Frosty+Piss · · 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?

    --
    If you want news from today, you have to come back tomorrow.
    1. Re:Good Grief... by GNUALMAFUERTE · · Score: 4, 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.

      --
      WTF am I doing replying to an AC at 5 A.M on a Friday night?
  7. Re:140 km/hr ? by viperidaenz · · Score: 4, Funny

    Perhaps they were afraid of what would happen if they reached 88mph.