Worlds first 3d printed car

The World's First 3D-Printed Car Is a Blast to Drive

This spring Fiat Chrysler CEO Sergio Marchionne called out the auto industry for the staggering amount of money it wastes in the design and manufacture of cars. His solution is based on classic business principles: consolidate and eliminate redundancy. Local Motors CEO Jay Rogers perceives the same challenge, but he's attacking it from a completely different direction. For Rogers, the problem stems not from business organization but from the fact that we still build cars the same way we did in 1915, on assembly lines with thousands of individual parts. It doesn't have to be that way, and the proof is parked in his Knoxville, Tennessee, garage, charged up and ready for a drive.

Local's answer to the cost-cutting question is the Strati, the first 3D-printed car. It's a humble (albeit very cool-looking) thing. Built—printed—in Detroit, in collaboration with Oak Ridge National Laboratory in Tennessee, the Strati is a small electric two-seater, the first of many models in Local's plans. Two factories, scaled to employ 100 people each, are under construction now and scheduled for completion by the end of the year. Local plans to build its own cars, but it could also end up working as a supplier for original-equipment manufacturers, some of whom have met with Rogers already. "One of them said, 'This would be great for prototyping,' " Rogers says. "And I said, 'Forget prototyping! This is how you make the car.' " That's the radical big idea, the one that prompted Popular Mechanics to bestow a Breakthrough Award on Local Motors last year.

The world's first 3D-printed car is crude by design, its dashboard looking like stacked silicone beads from a caulking gun. Its flanks, meanwhile, are smooth, resembling the exposed parts of the BMW i3's matte carbon tub. "We milled the sides to show how that would look," Rogers says. "Some of the other parts are just how they came out of the printer, so you can see that. But we can make it look however we want. You could put a vinyl wrap on it and the car would still be completely recyclable. "

The wheels are large-diameter but super-narrow to accommodate high-pressure, low-rolling-resistance tires.

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The Strati is printed from carbon-fiber-reinforced plastic, a versatile, strong, and relatively cheap material that could enable some new approaches to safety. Thanks to the nature of 3D printing, where the car is built in layers squirted from the nozzles of a massive printer, you can embed energy-absorbing crash structures or superstrong seat-belt mounts that are anchored deep in the body. You could bond springy bumpers to cushion pedestrian impacts (right now Local is experimenting with a printable elastic polyurethane material called NinjaFlex). And if you managed to catastrophically damage the tub, you could unbolt the motor and suspension, melt the car down, and print a new one. Of course, the Strati parked in Knoxville doesn't even have seat belts, but it's proof of concept.

The prototype I drove is the third that Local has printed and took about 40 hours. The company is currently looking for an electric-powertrain supplier, so for now the Strati has a beefy golf-cart motor as a stand-in. The rear-wheel-drive Strati is envisioned as a city car, but Rogers isn't blind to the performance possibilities. "If you put a motor with 150 or 200 horsepower in here, it would be a lot of fun," he says.

It's a lot of fun already. The rear suspension rides on an aluminum subframe, and with no distinction between body and chassis, the car feels inordinately solid, substantial. There's some clunking from the stand-in motor, but the car itself is silent. Put a Mitsubishi i-MiEV motor back there and this thing would be a riot.

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The last car I tested with a one-piece carbon tub was a McLaren 650S that cost more than $300,000. This Strati, lackluster motor notwithstanding, could cost about $5,000. No, it's not a McLaren. But to the family of five that crams aboard a motorcycle to get around—Rogers recently witnessed exactly that on a trip to India—it might as well be.

Developing countries would love this technology for cheap transportation, but so might the rich guy who wants a thousand-horsepower car of his own design, printed in a production run of one. Or the carmaker that wants to churn out a complete car in ten hours rather than 24, using a fraction of the components. Modern cars are complicated, but the union of 3D printing and electric propulsion—where the motor has just one moving part—points to a future in which that's no longer a given.

We currently take it for granted that cars are complicated and expensive. When you're driving the Strati, it's easy to imagine a day when we take it for granted that they're not.

Because it\’s so light, the strati\'s steering is unassisted.

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This story appears in the September 2015 issue of Popular Mechanics.

Ezra Dyer

Senior Editor

Ezra Dyer is a Car and Driver senior editor and columnist. He's now based in North Carolina but still remembers how to turn right. He owns a 2009 GEM e4 and once drove 206 mph. Those facts are mutually exclusive.

"World's first" 3D printed car created and driven by Local Motors

3D Printing

September 17, 2014

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The acceleration of 3D printing means that even cars can be now printed. The Local Motors Strati 3D car was printed live at the International Manufacturing Technology Show (IMTS) 2014 last week. The printing process took just 44 hours.

Strati was the result of the 3D Printed Car Design Challenge run by crowd-source automotive firm Local Motors. It was announced in June that the car's designer Michele Anoé had won the challenge, having seen off competition from more than 200 entrants in more than 30 countries. Anoé won a US$5,000 cash prize and the honor of seeing Strati be printed at IMTS.

"Local Motors has a long standing relationship with the Association For Manufacturing Technology who runs the International Manufacturing Technology Show," Kate Hartley of Local Motors told Gizmag. "Two years ago, the team at AMT invited Local Motors to build Local Motor's first crowdsourced vehicle, the Rally Fighter, over the 5-day show. This year, we decided to 3D-print a car."

The strati was printed using a Big Area Additive Manufacturing machine from Cincinnati Inc. & Oak Ridge National Laboratory

Local Motors claims that Strati is the world's first 3D printed car, although the 2010 Urbee is one of a number of projects that might also stake a claim to that title. Local Motors argues, however, that the Urbee used only 3D printed panels and features, whilst relying on a standard internal structure. Every part of the the Strati that isn't "mechanically involved," it says, is 3D printed.

The company also claims that it is the first time that the main portion of a car has been printed in one piece using direct digital manufacturing. Mechanical components, like the battery, motor, wiring and suspension, were sourced separately from a variety of suppliers and installed by the Local Motors team.

Local Motors tells Gizmag that the build process for the Strati has has three phases. First, the body is printed using a Big Area Additive Manufacturing machine from Cincinnati Inc. & Oak Ridge National Laboratory. Subtractive manufacturing is then carried out using a computer numerical control (CNC) routing machine and, finally, the printed portion of the vehicle is assembled with the additional components over a two day period. The car takes 44 hours to print, 1 day to mill and 2 days to assemble, making a 5 day build process in total.

The car was fully functional and was driven following the build process

"The Strati was designed by our community, [will be] made in our Microfactory and will be driven by you," says CEO of Local Motors John B. Rogers Jr. in a press release. "This brand-new process disrupts the manufacturing status quo, changes the consumer experience and proves that a car can be born in an entirely different way."

The completed Strati was fully functional and was driven for the first time on the morning of Saturday 13th September. Local Motors says that the milestone is just the beginning of its 3D-printed vehicles. The printed Strati begins an international tour this week.

The video below shows a time-lapse of the Strati being printed.

Source: Local Motors

3D-printed Car by Local Motors - The Strati

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World's first car now 3D printed

localmotors. com

At the International Manufacturing Technology Show now in Chicago, US-based Local Motors is 3D printing the first functioning electric car. It is reported by The Wall Street Journal.

The process of printing and assembling the two-person battery-powered car called the Strati began on Sunday and should be completed on Thursday. The huge printer builds layer upon layer of a body and chassis made of black plastic reinforced with carbon fiber. The electric motor, seats, wheels, tires and windshield are made by Local Motors in traditional ways, but it will still have only 47 parts in this car, while in ordinary cars there are thousands, says John Rogers, CEO of Local Motors: critical changes, drastically reducing the number of spare parts. nine0003

Once the bodywork is complete, a computerized machine will machine it to the desired specifications and drill 32 holes to attach the rest of the parts.

On the company's website, you can see how the process of "printing" the car is going.

Its production project, which was founded in 2007 by Local Motors in partnership with Oak Ridge National Laboratory, aims to confound critics who say the 3D printing process is too slow and expensive, to apply it in mass production. nine0003

“It's not about the car, it's about the process,” says Rogers. The purpose of the project is to demonstrate the possibilities of a new production technology. “It took us less than 40 hours to print one car and less than four days to assemble the prototype; it's an incredibly short amount of time. In a few months, we will be able to reduce the printing period to less than 20 hours and are confident that two people can then assemble a finished car in less than an hour, Rogers said in a statement on the Local Motors website. - Our goal is to approach the creation of a car in a completely different way: there are usually more than 20,000 parts in a modern car; we want fewer than 20 in the cars of the future.” nine0003

The first version of the Strati will be capable of traveling at speeds up to 65 km/h, with a battery charge that Rogers says will last 190-240 km. Local Motors hopes to begin sales in the coming months. The price will range from $18,000 to $30,000 depending on the set of options that buyers prefer. The company also plans to give them the opportunity to choose the design of the car to their liking. Once the Strati receives a safety certificate, the car will be able to move on highways, Rogers hopes. nine0003

The Strati was based on a design submitted in a public competition held by Local Motors and open to professionals and amateurs alike. The running layout used a transmission from Renault Twizy, the company reports on its website.

The Strati 3D printer was produced by Cincinnati, an engineering company in Harrison, Ohio. It is capable of processing parts up to 1 x 1.5 x 3 m and is significantly larger than traditional 3D printers, which are usually not much larger than a washing machine. nine0003

3D printing, also known as additive printing, builds material on an object layer by layer. Unlike traditional technologies, where parts are machined from blanks, as a result of which part of the material ends up in waste, 3D printing allows you to model an object on a computer and “print” it from plastic, metal or composite materials.

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The world's first 3D printed electric car

Olxi

Author:

Olxi

December 13, 2014 12:13 pm

Tags: 3d printer Strati auto

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Strati from the Arizona company Local Motors is the world's first 3D printed electric car. Its design and production took 5 months - however, the development of future models can be reduced to six weeks, and the printing itself can be reduced to 24 hours. I have to admit, it's incredibly fast. nine0003

Some components of the car - such as the engine, tires, and suspension - cannot be printed, but most of the car, from the chassis to the seats, is made of carbon-fiber-reinforced thermoplastic, which has the same strength as medium-hard aluminum. The Strati has only 49 parts - compare that to 25,000 components in a typical car. The price of the car is 11 thousand pounds. nine0003

Printer provided by Cincinnati Inc. It is much larger than conventional 3D printers, which often allow you to print objects with dimensions of about 25x25 cm. This printer is also capable of printing parts with dimensions of 1x1.7x3 meters.

Local Motors has been manufacturing motorcycles, motor skateboards and other vehicles using the same method since 2007. According to the company, Strati will be on the roads in the next 12 months.

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Worlds first 3d printed car

The World's First 3D-Printed Car Is a Blast to Drive

"World's first" 3D printed car created and driven by Local Motors

World's first car now 3D printed

The world's first 3D printed electric car

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