World’s First Three-Dimensional Printed Car Made in Chicago

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World’s First Three-Dimensional Printed Car Made in Chicago

An Arizona company is the first to use 3-D printing to make a car

By Julia Pyper and ClimateWire
car built with 3-d printer
A many-layered thing: the world’s first car built by a 3-D printer.
Courtesy of Local Motors
Layer by layer, inch my inch, the world’s first 3-D printed vehicle seemingly emerged from thin air this week on the floor of the International Manufacturing Technology Show in Chicago.

The Strati, named after the Italian word for layer, was printed in one piece over 44 hours using a process called direct digital manufacturing—the seamless fabrication of components from computer design to physical object. This is the first time this method has been used to make a car, one that also happens to be fully electric.

Mechanical components of the vehicle, including the battery, motor and suspension, were obtained from various sources, such as Renault’s urban electric car Twizy. A team of engineers will rapidly assemble the final parts of the vehicle today and, if all goes well, will take it on a historic first test drive tomorrow.

The project is being spearheaded by Local Motors, a self-styled vehicle innovation company based in Arizona. According to CEO John Rogers, the Strati marks a breakthrough in automotive history by proving that a car can be created in an entirely new way.

“Our whole bet has been for the military or average civilian consumers or for fleet customers, that if you can change the way you make a vehicle, and do it faster, then you can catch innovation as it comes along more quickly,” he said.

The Strati, considered a two-seater “neighborhood” electric vehicle, has a range of 100 to 120 miles (depending on the battery pack) and a maximum speed of 40 mph. Because it’s not designed for highways, the Strati can be licensed without having to pass all of the standard safety tests. Local Motors plans to start selling production-level cars before the end of the year for between $18,000 and $30,000.

But perhaps more novel than the Strati itself is the way in which it was made. Rapid, local, flexible manufacturing could have broad economic, societal and environmental implications.

Is the manufacturing future local?
Local Motors, best known for making the Rally Fighter off-highway vehicle, has come a long way in a short period of time. When Local Motors signed a partnership agreement with the Department of Energy’s Oak Ridge National Laboratory in January, it didn’t have a printing machine, it didn’t have printing material and it didn’t have a design for the car.

All of those tasks were completed in just six months. The company started printing in the last three months and has already gone from more than 140 hours of printing time to complete a car to less than 45 hours as of this week.

“We expect in the next couple of months to be below 24 hours and then eventually get it below 10 hours,” Rogers said. “This is in a matter of months. Today, the best Detroit or Germany can do is 10 hours on a [production] line, after hundreds of years of progress.”….more here

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World’s First Three-Dimensional Printed Car Made in Chicago