Honda Motors has taken a big step into the consumer 3D printing world by offering cars for download.
automotive
The Urbee Car: Destroyed?
This picture tells the story. Evidently the world’s first 3D printed car, the Urbee, incurred significant damage while being shipped home to North America from the recent 3D Printshow in London. It looks to us that either the car was not properly tied down or the shipping container took a bit of a tumble. … Continue reading The Urbee Car: Destroyed?
The World’s First 3D Printed Car Needs Your Help
You might recall the Urbee, the world’s first 3D printed car (or at least 3D printed body), unveiled in 2011. Now the folks behind the project are looking to build interest and funding to proceed to Urbee-2, a more advanced vehicle. The new vehicle will have not only a 3D printed body, but also… Continue reading The World’s First 3D Printed Car Needs Your Help
Printing a 1927 Miller 91 Race Car
It’s one thing to print simple items with your 3D printer, like a coat hook or clamp, but some people take the power of the technology to the limit. The folks at CIDEAS, a commercial 3D print service bureau, pulled out all the stops to produce a small scale replica of a 1927 Miller 91… Continue reading Printing a 1927 Miller 91 Race Car
Design of the Week: 3D Printed Gran Torino
This week’s selection is Ioan Florea’s amazing full-size 3D printed Gran Torino, as displayed at Carbondale’s Surplus Gallery in Illinois during his Tactile Histories exhibition. The Gran Torino, we believe, is intact underneath a large number of 3D printed pieces that completely cover the car’s normal plain surface. The Gran Torino is not “3D… Continue reading Design of the Week: 3D Printed Gran Torino
Lexus Creates 3D Printed Car-Mice For iPads
This is one of the more unusual uses of 3D printing we’ve seen. Apparently car maker Lexus exhibited their current vehicles at the recent 2013 Seoul Motor Show in Korea. At their display was an “Interactive Table” holding several bolted-down iPads.
He’s 3D Printing a James Bond Car!
New Zealander Ivan Sentch must be a big Bond fan as he’s undertaken a spectacular project to 3D print a life-size replica of James Bond’s 1961 Aston Martin DB4. To be clear, he’s not actually 3D printing the car itself, but rather a mold from which he will produce fiberglass body sections. These will… Continue reading He’s 3D Printing a James Bond Car!
Rapid Sheet Metal Prototyping at Ford
Over the last 100 years or so, the Ford Motor Company has gotten really good at stamping sheet metal parts. Sadly, stamping can take up to 6-8 weeks from the time the design leaves the CAD station, so it’s not great for prototyping. To speed up prototyping, Ford has created a rapid process they… Continue reading Rapid Sheet Metal Prototyping at Ford
3D Printed Car Wins Pilkington Design Award
Nir Siegel, a vehicle design student at the Royal College of Art has recently been awarded the Pilkington prize’s Best Design Interpretation for his Genesis car. The Genesis, which is built to be completely customizable can be 3D printed and self-assembled. According to Siegel the idea behind the Genesis is “to evolve products and… Continue reading 3D Printed Car Wins Pilkington Design Award
Ford Predicts 3D Printed Spare Parts
A recent Wall Street Journal article describes Ford and General Electric’s experiments in 3D printed prototypes and production parts. While that’s not new, we observed an interesting quote: The auto maker sees a future where customers will be able to print their own replacement parts. Theoretically, a customer could log onto the Web, scan… Continue reading Ford Predicts 3D Printed Spare Parts
Nissan’s Delta Wing Testbed Utilizes Additive Manufacturing
Efficiency is the name of the game when it comes to car design, and Nissan isn’t taking any prisoners with their Deltawing racer. According to Nissan, the concept behind the Deltawing is “to half the aerodynamic drag, half the power, half the mass, half the fuel consumption, and half the tire consumption [while]… Continue reading Nissan’s Delta Wing Testbed Utilizes Additive Manufacturing
3D Print A Car In 2500 Hours
You might recall the Urbee – the world’s first 3D printed car, developed in 2011 by Kor EcoLogic? The design of this amazing car pioneered several important 3D printing techniques. Now Kor EcoLogic is pursuing a second version of the Urbee, with intentions of going into production. Evidently they’ve “worked out the bugs since… Continue reading 3D Print A Car In 2500 Hours
Ford Equips Engineers With MakerBots
It’s no surprise that engineers at Ford make use of high-power commercial 3D printers; the technology has been in use at major industrial design operations for, well, decades. What is surprising is the revelation that Ford intends to “put the smaller Makerbot replicators at every engineer’s desk in the coming months”, according to a report… Continue reading Ford Equips Engineers With MakerBots
007’s 3D Printed Cars
Not one, but three 3D printed cars were created for secret agent 007 James Bond for his recent film, Skyfall. No, they weren’t full size, but instead were one third of original size. The three Aston Martin DB5’s were used for used rather destructively in the film to avoid the expense (and tragedy) of… Continue reading 007’s 3D Printed Cars
Exclusive Video: 3D Printed Car Unveiled
Last night Fabbaloo attended the official unveiling of the Urbee 3D printed car, which we’ve covered previously. The Urbee is an ultra-efficient urban vehicle prototype that changes travel paradigm – and also engineering paradigms as its entire body was 3D printed using Stratasys 3D print services. Click the video above to see the unveiling, and… Continue reading Exclusive Video: 3D Printed Car Unveiled
Urbee, The 3D Printed Car
Can you 3D print a working car? The folks making the Urbee car believe so. They’ve prototyping an ultra-efficient (300 miles per gallon, 0.8L/100Km) urban vehicle whose body is entirely 3D printed. We recently visited the Urbee shop and found it to be a very unusual vehicle: Two seater with some room for… Continue reading Urbee, The 3D Printed Car
Lexus Invents New Form of 3D Printing
New Scientist reports on an innovative parts-making process invented by Lexus. It’s a kind of futuristic 3D Loom that essentially “weaves” parts together. The circular device pulls a series of carbon fibres into a desired shape and is capable of “weaving” highly complex parts much faster than traditional techniques. Curves, varying thicknesses and dimensions are… Continue reading Lexus Invents New Form of 3D Printing
Racing Prototypes
MCD Racing produces radio-controlled racing cars, 1/5 the size of real vehicles. These are not toys – they are highly sophisticated machines capable of winning world championships. These cars are capable of world record speeds of an unbelievable 260Kph (161mph)! Obviously they must be very carefully designed, perhaps with 1/5 the effort that goes into… Continue reading Racing Prototypes
Printing A Car? Really?
After last week’s news that an entire car body was being produced on a 3D printer, we had an offline discussion with Joris Peels of i.Materialise on what this really meant. Obviously, the mass media would have everyone believe an Entire Car was printed, when in fact it was only the body – and then… Continue reading Printing A Car? Really?
Stratasys Prints A Car!
Well, not exactly an *entire car* – but just its body. The Urbee was an entrant to Progressive Insurance’s Automotive X-Prize. The competition has now closed and Urbee ended up ranked “in the top 30 in the world” according to a recent press release. What’s so interesting about this to us? The car’s body, including… Continue reading Stratasys Prints A Car!