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.

Comments

Super-car?

[The Grim Reefer]

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.

Re:Super-car?

[Areyoukiddingme]

I'm not sure I'd call this a super-car per se.

It definitely isn't. It's not street legal anywhere in the world that can afford to buy it (with the possible exception of Dubai). It has no side indicator lights, no side rearview mirrors, and while there are no photos of the rear of the vehicle, I'd be willing to bet it doesn't have the required center brake light. I have a sneaking suspicion that it would perform miserably in crash tests as well. Space frame construction is so rigid that a vehicle built with it tends to injure or kill its occupants (or occupant, in this case) in a collision at much higher rates than other designs, for lack of crumple zones.

I'd also like to see skid pad, slalom numbers, etc.

So would I. Space frames don't resist torsional stress very well, which is outright dangerous for high speed handling. You called it a track car. I'll go even farther, and call it a drag strip car. It doesn't sound suitable even for a track, let alone a street. Somebody else commented about the styling "straight out of a kid's calendar" and it definitely looks and sounds like a kid with too much money said "I wanna make a super awesome car! With 3D printing!!!111eleven" and neglected to talk to any mechanical engineers who had been involved in designing actual street legal, street capable cars. They may make 10,000 of them, but they won't look like the thing in the pictures.

In short, it looks like the concept cars that came out of Detroit for decades that never went into production because they were illegal or dangerous or both.

Cathodes and Annodes

[Hadlock]

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.

Re:Cathodes and Annodes

[gweilo8888]

Aluminum does not self-protect when the surface oxidizes.

Ummm... Yes. Yes, it does.

From Wiki: "Aluminium is remarkable for ... its ability to resist corrosion due to the phenomenon of passivation."

Or if you prefer, you could just look around your house. Chances are fairly good that you have some untreated aluminum (as opposed to aluminum alloys, which need treatment) somewhere -- perhaps in a window frame if your house is of the right age, or in pots, pans, camping gear, etc. You'll be able to recognize it from its dull finish, and the fact that it looks identical to the day you bought it. Were your assertion correct, it would long since have oxidized away to nothing...

Incidentally, one of those treatments for aluminum alloys? Alclading, which is just what it sounds like it would be, and which wouldn't work if your assertion was correct. It's the process of bonding a thin layer of pure aluminum to the surface of the alloy, thereby protecting the greater whole because the aluminum layer self-protects when it oxidizes.

Re:imperial = fagot

[jbengt]

As an American who routinely has to use feet, inches, fractions of an inch, square feet, square inches, cubic feet, gallons, lbs force, lbs mass, ounces mass, watts, kilowatts, horsepower, btuh, boiler horsepower, square feet EDR, psi, feet of water, inches of water, inches of mercury, mm of mercury, atmospheres, etc., converting back and forth within the customary US units is a pain in the ass, no matter what you say. Converting to metric, doing the math, then converting back can sometimes be easier.