Have you guys seen the Urbee? The worlds first 3d printed car. Its a very interesting use of rapid materials and I am sure this is the first of many.
Unfortunately I think they may have sketched this up back in '85.
The sad part for me is that they could have produced the prototype in fiberglass. There is nothing unique about the form. I wonder how long it took too. Surely, the parts weren’t printed in one part and the whole thing required a lot of post-processing (ie sanding, filling, painting). Did they really save anything here?
It would be awesome to use the nature of 3d printing to create a super structural skin that could not be manufactured any other way. A true unibody construction… even so, they didn’t have to make it so god awful! Thanks for sharing though, this would be an interesting 1HDC to see what could be done with this manufacturing process other than style variation.
I am looking forward to this long anticipated technology to open up the flexibility and customization of auto body design. ACM
Digitized-die forming (DDF) is a flexible manufacturing technology through which a variety of three-dimensional sheet metal parts can be produced in a DDF system. It eliminates the need to design and produce the conventional die. The central component of DDF system is a pair of matrices of punches, the punches are controlled by computer and the desired shape of die is constructed by changing the heights of punches. Based on the flexibility of DDF, new forming processes are designed that cannot be realized in conventional stamping. In varying deformation path DDF, a sheet part is manufactured along an optimal forming path, and large deformation can be achieved for the material with poor formability. In sectional DDF, a sheet part is formed section by section, and this technique makes it possible to manufacture large-size parts in a small DDF press. A closed-loop forming system was built by combining DDF with rapid 3D-shape measurement system. It is used to compensate for material springback and improve dimensional accuracy of the formed part. And a DDF system with multi-point blankholder control system was developed to control the material flow, thereby to prevent sheet parts from wrinkling and tearing. The DDF integrated system is described, and the detailed forming procedures are explained in the paper. Typical examples are presented showing the applicability of the DDF technology.