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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.
2.66 decimal seconds (which is around 2.3 regular seconds).
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...
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.
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.
Faster than you can say "hooolyyy f..."
Lost at C:>. Found at C.
This car is made by the free market. There's no government involvement whatsoever, the entire thing is made by a 3D printer and the plans, and even the materials if you wish, can be obtained simply by paying a supplier in bitcoins, and you're free to copy even those.
So quite honestly, I find your comments slanderous. It is OBVIOUSLY going to be better than a government subsidized deathtrap ie anything from GM, Ford, Chrysler, FIAT, VW, Audi, Honda, Acura, Nissan, Kia, Toyota, Lexus, and so on, ALL of whom have government "help" in the forms of grants, tax rebates, and government educated employees.
Time and time again the free market has been proven to be more reliable, safer, better for the environment, and better at making things people need.
There is simply no way this thing is as dangerous as you suggest. That's economically impossible.
There's this image... you may have seen it...
It's a visual map with practically every nation in the world highlighted, and it says "countries that use the metric system".
Then the inverse is shown, where the USA is highlighted and it says "countries that have landed on the moon".
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.
Since the lunar lander feet were made in Canada (Montreal, to be exact), technically we were the first on the moon.
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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...
Let me guess, you're using voice recognition software?
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.
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.