3-D Printed Car Is as Strong as Steel, Half the Weight

Also looks like half the car in size.
 
Why are futuristic cars always so hideous and weird compared to regular cars, no one wants to buy weird looking turds, at least I don't, give me all the benefits of technology in a recognizeable shape and slowly change it, you start too weird too fast and no one wants to take the leap...
 
Ain't no way ABS is as strong as steel, especially when printed
 
Wow, Wired do love to over hype 3D printing. This is just a kit car in which the fiber glass has been replaced with RP.

I spend my days designing and working with 3D printed parts, they're very useful, but not the saviour of manufacturing as Wired seems to believe.
 
Ain't no way ABS is as strong as steel, especially when printed

"Steel" spans a huge gamut of materials. I'm sure there's at least one grade of steel geared towards ductility instead of hardness, so that, technically, ABS has greater tensile or compressive strength than it.
 
"Steel" spans a huge gamut of materials. I'm sure there's at least one grade of steel geared towards ductility instead of hardness, so that, technically, ABS has greater tensile or compressive strength than it.

Certainly none that I can think of. It's just the whole view of RP being the future that just irks me, especially when people like this try to cash in on it. Without any pressure applied, or controlled cool down rate, a printed part will never be as strong as say an injected molded part, let alone a metal part. I find that the strength of parts is typically cut (at least) in half over an injected molded part of the same material. The time and cost it takes to print a single part is still ridiculous too. It's completely unfeasible for any sort of mass production of load bearing parts, and will be for a long time.
 
Ain't no way ABS is as strong as steel, especially when printed

There are other forms of RP, Windform XT has a tensile strength of about 80MPa.. not steel but not awful either.... unlike the cost which is astronomical.

You can also get RP parts plated, again not cheap but a useful strength improvement!
 
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Certainly none that I can think of. It's just the whole view of RP being the future that just irks me, especially when people like this try to cash in on it. Without any pressure applied, or controlled cool down rate, a printed part will never be as strong as say an injected molded part, let alone a metal part. I find that the strength of parts is typically cut (at least) in half over an injected molded part of the same material. The time and cost it takes to print a single part is still ridiculous too. It's completely unfeasible for any sort of mass production of load bearing parts, and will be for a long time.

Same, it's getting to the point where it's just nauseating. RP stuff is great for fit-up type stuff in our application, we've never used it in a situation where it would see any kind of stress.
 
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