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3D Printed Supercar Chassis Unveiled
ErnieKey writes: Divergent Microfactories is unveiling a revolutionary approach to car manufacturing, as evidenced by their supercar, the Blade. Using 3D printed aluminum 'nodes' in strategic manufacturing, they've created an automobile that weighs in at just 1,400 pounds, and can go from 0-60 MPH in only 2.2 seconds. DM will be producing 10,000 cars per year and also making technology available to any other companies interested.
Note: Look out in the near future for video interviews with Divergent founder Kevin Czinger and Blade project lead Brad Balzer.
So how fast does it accelerate to 62.5 mph?
(just asking for us metric folk)
Don't be apathetic. Procrastinate!
I smelled formaldehyde from the exhaust following one of them.
Don't be apathetic. Procrastinate!
I know this is a tired complaint, but it's so annoying to have to convert mph, feet, inches, hectotrads, farenheit, etc. to human-style units of measure for every bloody article posted here. You americans deserve a kick in the arse for not converting to metric.
PS: my capcha check for this post happened to be "imperial".
For all of the rest of the world (except Burma, which doesn't count), the car weighs 636kg, and does 0-100 km/hr in 2.2 sec.
I'm not sure I'd call this a super-car per se. If you go to the company website you can see the interior. It has one seat. Which makes it more of a track car. They compare it to a Veyron, which has two leather seats and other amenities. The seat also appears to be more analogous to a mesh office chair than a car seat So I can't imagine it's terribly supportive during high G cornering, unless you have the seat custom made to fit the owner. I'd also like to see skid pad, slalom numbers, etc. If all they're going to give are straight line numbers, at top fuel dragster can go 0-100 mph in .9 seconds. They did a lot of cool stuff to make it light, but I'd like to know more about the suspension and handling.
Frankly, this isn't terribly impressive. The Ariel Atom 500 will manage a 0-60 of 2.3 seconds or less from 200 *fewer* horsepower than the Blade, thanks to an even lighter weight of 1,213 pounds. And like the Blade, it has space frame construction, they just haven't wrapped some flimsy composite panels and a plexiglass windshield over it all. (But what did that add to the weight, really? I doubt it was 187 pounds, so the Atom is still lighter...)
All the Atom really lacks is the "look-at-us" headline-grabbing use of 3D printing, which doesn't seem to be bringing terribly much of an advantage to the table here. And I guess, the styling that's right out of a kid's calendar. But really, what's revolutionary here? It's certainly not the construction or performance...
Up next on Slashdot: A revolutionary new 3D-printed paperweight that holds down paper better than ever. It's going to revolutionize the paperweight industry!
The problem with metal nodes and Carbon Fiber (CF) tubes, as the Bicycle industry is now learning, is that if you have direct contact between the CF and metal nodes (as the first "Carbon Fiber" bicycles were made, back in the early 1990's), the CF will react with the metal, and given 15 years, become a rolling death trap. Lots of old "Carbon Fiber" bikes on Craigslist now as owners are seeing them fall apart during normal use due to corrosion.
That said, there's no reason why they can't build latticework connecting members that are 3D printed, rather than CF tubes which are not optimized to be dimensionally stable in the direction(s) they'll be loaded the most.
moox. for a new generation.
Agreed. 3D printing is nice for prototypes but hardly cost effective for production.
I am sorry, but come up with a different way to put together that chassis, I am not driving a thing that is made of Lego pieces bolted together in real life. A few laps on the track, Ok, IRL on a real road with real potholes and real asphalt and gravel, etc? Hmmm. I don't want pieces of my car becoming pieces of the road or pieces of my body.
You can't handle the truth.
It's 2015. While things are not perfect in Myanmar today the military dictatorship was back when we were calling it Burma.
Does the car come with a 3D-printed penis extension? Like other cars in this class, "small and rich" is the demo they're shooting for.
So you have to compare it to race cars, not so impressive when comparing it apples to apples.
How is 3D printing a revolutionary approach to car manufacturing? It is not like they are actually going to use 3D printing to print the cars when they produce them in bulk. If they do, then it truly will be a supercar, because it will cost many times more than traditional manufacturing methods with less strength of materials and quality.
If you are not allowed to question your government then the government has answered your question.
I stopped reading at "1/3 the emissions of an electric car".
Buck Feta. You know what to do.
700 HP 4-cylinder? So what, like 5 MPG and 25k mile life-span?
Something tells me this thing won't be cheap or reliable. There are previous proven designs out there right now that can match the same times (and probably better on the track) all while being cheaper and certainly more long-lasting.
Add to that you can't 3D print the body panels and then call it a "3D printed super car."
Unless you are literally 3D printing the entire car including the engine block and the wheels, you're not 3D printing a car.
Off-topic, but I drive an Ariel Atom in Need for Speed: Most Wanted. It's fast, but it really shines when you want to jump over stuff.
OK, carry on.
You are welcome on my lawn.
I doubt it would pass any sort of crash testing.
I'd also like to know if they've actually tested the acceleration at 2.2 seconds, or if it's calculated based on power-to-weight ratios.
3D printing could create shapes with more complex internal structures.
Machining from a block of high grade Al would make stronger parts.
All the engineering in a car isn't just to make something that is light and moves fast. Slap a rocket on a small frame and you can go fast. It is a tradeoff between performance, safety, reliability, cost, features, efficiency, legality, and design. This thing looks like something that some mech-E students threw together as a senior project, not an actual thing that people could use. They make a big deal out of using 3D printed parts, but then they come up with a design that doesn't take advantage of any of the features of 3D printing, like the ability to make complex internal honeycombed shapes.
For acceleration, it is torque that matters.
Horsepower governs top-end speed.
Well yes, but weight matters more, and I can't very well compare torque when Divergent Microfactories hasn't stated it, now, can I?
But OK, I'll humor you. The Atom 500 has just 296 lb-ft of torque. That's actually a bit less than what you could find in a typical executive sedan like, say, the Audi A6 (325 lb-ft). The weight is the important bit, though: The Ariel weighs about one-third what the Audi does.
And like I said, it also weighs less than this supposed-supercar, despite being street-legal and providing you with not one but two seats.
So what, pray tell, is so special about this car that it merited being on Slashdot, other than that it contained the buzzword-du-jour in the press release?
No, no it doesnt.. or are you perhaps planning to use a vehicle with no gearbox?
HP is all that matters (not just peak HP of course, but HP across your used engine rpm range)
BECAUSE you have a gearbox... and therefore can choose run operate in the rev range you want.
'Torque is what matters' is the cry of the ye olde V8 lovin redneck.. but provably stupid.
These are the same Clowns who blew ~$200,000,000 on the CODA, and after delivering a few cars, went into Bankruptcy.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coda_Automotive
But after all, this is 3-D Printing!!!
Slashdot needs a story every week or so about some Crackpot or Fraudster pushing some new and 3-D-ish vapor product.
(BTW, am I really the only one here who looked into the history of this company, and the people behind it? You folks really are idiots.)
There are a couple of attributes which the article "somehow" forgets to mention: Strength and Rigidity! You know, those attributes that define a generic construct as a chassis . . . the thing that holds everything together under stress and protects the squishy humans inside.
I'll hold my enthusiasm for now.
Supposedly, the 3D printed frame can be assembled by normal people, without any training, which is interesting, kinda.
He tried to kill me with a forklift!
Wheels. Engine. Engine mounts. Wiring. Steering. Exhaust system. Hell, even mirrors and headlights!
What I am seeing is a trivial demo of an idea oriented towards raising money from gullible VCs.
-jcr
The only title of honor that a tyrant can grant is "Enemy of the State."
Text so light, it's whiter than white!
What sort of idiot uses light grey text on a white or light grey background? Fucking retards.
It's been long known from practice, and Finite Element Methods, that pipes of uniform diameter or thickness are suboptimal, from a uniform strength load bearing standpoint. But of course, it's easy to manufacture pipes of uniform length, and overprovision the diameter and/or thickness, i.e. waste material and add weight. Also, in traditional engineering, joins are weak links, because of disruption of uniformity and often, weaker or less uniform bonds, welding or fitting. This also adds a lot of weight.
3D printing (or 'additive manufacturing') is meant to address these. The design is no longer constrained to uniform pipe diameters, or even, circular pipes. Also, what with the incredibly high ratio of materials that are there purely for the fitting? The whole thing looks like a traditionally welded set with all the possible known wastes, except maybe some weight savings due to more uniform joins, as obviously, welding is not needed. Or rather, the entire thing is welded from scratch (dust)! So I suspect it's a publicity stunt.
A design that's more obvious in benefitting from 3D printing must be way more organic looking, because circular pipes of uniform diameter are a manufacturing convenience, rather than the best resulting shape that you get if you work with static and dynamic load bearing forces, impact etc. So something like this, at least on the surface, does a better job of showing load bearing structures made possible by 3D printing: http://wordlesstech.com/edag-l...
Up next on Slashdot: Usage of less vs. fewer.
In sentences and phrases with "than", you should use less with numbers.
"The Ariel Atom has 200 less horsepower than the Blade."
I smelled formaldehyde from the exhaust following one of them.
I smelled something else coming form these guys. FTFA
"The vehicle, called the Blade, has 1/3 the emissions of an electric car and 1/50 the factory capital costs of other manufactured cars."
Smells like bullshit to me...
I wish I had a good sig, but all the good ones are copyrighted
I know what a 1200 lb. car looks like, and it is not street drivable. Go to here: http://jjhughesracing.com/
Does not seem like there will be many quality jobs for the ordinary workers there, does it? Worse, they are ready to spread it to the established companies:
Where are the usual concerns for workers? If only six months ago we were denouncing Amazon for using robots in warehouses (including highly-moderated threats of armed uprisings), why are we commending TFA today?
In Soviet Washington the swamp drains you.
"The vehicle, called the Blade, has 1/3 the emissions of an electric car and 1/50 the factory capital costs of other manufactured cars."
I smelled something else coming form these guys. FTFA
"The vehicle, called the Blade, has 1/3 the emissions of an electric car and 1/50 the factory capital costs of other manufactured cars."
Smells like bullshit to me...
While the factory cost claim may be true since you are not investing in a lot of very large, specialized machinery but adapting and scaling a technology, that has been proven capable of being used to manufacture vehicle parts that are eagle to congenitally made parts, that is much less capital intensive. The amazons, claim, how ever is odd, since an electric vehicle has zero emissions relative to a gasoline or diesel engine; perhaps they are looking at the life cycle emissions and adding in emissions from production and distribution?
I could see this technology initially taking off as a kit car product where you build your running gear from this and then add the body of your choice to it.
You could also easily manufacture custom mounts and other bits specific to a spec
I'm a consultant - I convert gibberish into cash-flow.
For $20 to 25 thousand (depending on model) you can get a Polaris Slingshot today. With approximately the same performance numbers, except top speed.
Passionately Indifferent
The sooner autonomous cars take over the better, people crashing cars is causing the weight of cars to be fixed at very high levels.
If cars were all autonomous they could weigh 650Kg and safety would not be a concern because crashes would be so much fewer. Heavy vehicles could be restricted to motorways and speed restricted to 20mph when in cities.
Waterfox - a Firefox fork with legacy extension support, security updates and better privacy by default.
Electric motors get their peak torque at zero RPM. Most suitable for traction applications. Far far superior than mechanical gear box transmissions. That is why diesel electric locomotives run their diesel engines convert their output to electricity and drive the wheels using the electric motors.
sed -e 's/Chuck Norris/Rajnikant/g' joke > fact
Let me guess, you're using voice recognition software?
Unless it folds up into a suitcase, so he can take it into the office.
No. Torque and horsepower are mathematically related. You cannot increase one without increasing the other. Look at all of the 1/4 mile time estimators - all of them figure out elapsed time using only horsepower and weight.
legality
Well, the 3D printing can help with that at least...
Trains didn't use mechanical transmissions before diesel-electric. The torque convertor found in every automatic transmission has its roots in train engines. A good torque convertor can transmit over 95% of the drivetrain power to the wheels even at low (or even zero) rpm. That's why a brake-start on a high performance car with an automatic transmission is extremely effective. For a lot of modern cars that are sold with both AT and MT transmissions, the auto is quicker.
From the article: "The vehicle, called the Blade, has 1/3 the emissions of an electric car"
I can't imagine the arithmetic somersaults you have to go through to back up a claim like that...
I have a 1962 Streamline 22' "Duchess" Travel Trailer and had to track down some .025 2024-T3 AlClad to make repairs on it. What's really neato about it is that it has a hard side and a soft side, and they're about equally thick. The hard side is dull, the soft side is shiny and easy to polish. Then, if you want it to stay shiny, you either clear coat it occasionally, or wax it regularly.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
Obviously 3D printing is going to be an enormous blessing for all of us. It is as profound as the creation of computers in what i expect for social and economic change. Yet everyone I mention 3D printing to seems to be unaware, lost in space, or totally ignorant of what 3D printing can do. It is as if they are the ones who have been slapped silly with a mullet. I just can not understand how blind or dumb people can be when it comes to something that is sort of new.
Ah, don't forget turboshaft engines!
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Howmet_TX
To me this 50 year old car looks great and sounds great!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l4PMalIwoo0
Let me guess, you're using voice recognition software?
Nah, just using a speal cheeker...
I'm a consultant - I convert gibberish into cash-flow.
Perhaps instead of posting nonsense, you could try Googling first.
http://lmgtfy.com/?q=ariel+ato...
I'm sorry, but no. The frame could be assembled by normal people without any training without being 3D-printed. It's just buzzword for buzzword's sake, and it's idiotic.
'Torque is what matters' is the cry of the ye olde V8 lovin redneck.. but provably stupid.
It is clear that you know nothing of engineering. The drive turns the wheels, which at point-of-contact constitute a lever-arm. Force that this lever-arm exerts on the road (making car accelerate) is precisely the definition of torque.
Pound-for-pound, a Nissan Leaf will beat my Jaguar off the line. . . but only for about 10 meters. The Leaf will never make it to 160 mph, although my Jaguar does. This is because a Leaf, as with any electric-motor car, has a linear power curve, delivering the same power at any speed – hence the higher the speed, the less torque it can apply. If you can do simple math, it is obvious.
As for "V8–lovin' rednecks": V8s just put out lots of HP (energy/time, as in Watts) — thus requiring a gearbox to optimize torque at a given speed. This is why drivers rev and 'pop the clutch' for torque at 0 mph (off-the-line). From an engineering standpoint, it requires an overly complex mechanical system for power transmission – gearbox and all.
You still do not understand the definition of torque. May I suggest Wikipedia?
Very cool. I had always wondered how they accelerate those gigantic loads so slowly but surely, without burning-out transmission gear-boxes.
Now if only they carried on-board batteries for regenerative braking, then rail would be even more superior to any other land-based transportation system.