Category Archives: News
3D Printed Car Urbee 2 Announced: Light, Aerodynamic, and Custom Made
Last June, we featured Urbee, the first 3D printed car. Optimized for renewable energy, this novel design promises 200 miles per gallon. Details about the next generation design, called Urbee 2, are now coming to light as the car nears production.
It has a metal chassis but a plastic frame, 3 wheels and weighs only 1,200 pounds. And nearly everything is made through 3D printing.
Jim Kor, head of Kor Ecologic, talks about the process of designing the Urbee series in the video below.
In an interview with Kor, Wired also shares new details about the new 3D printed car.
“We thought long and hard about doing a second one,” [Kor] says of the Urbee. “It’s been the right move.”
Kor and his team built the three-wheel, two-passenger vehicle at RedEye, an on-demand 3-D printing facility. The printers he uses create ABS plastic via Fused Deposition Modeling (FDM). The whole car – which is about 10 feet long – takes about 2,500 hours [to produce].
Besides easy reproduction, making the car body via FDM affords Kor the precise control that would be impossible with sheet metal. The current model has a curb weight of just 1,200 pounds.
Kor used the design freedom of 3D printing to combine a typical car’s multitude of parts into simple unibody shapes. For example, when he prints the car’s dashboard, he’ll make it with the ducts already attached without the need for joints and connecting parts. What would be dozens of pieces of plastic and metal end up being one piece of 3D printed plastic.
“The thesis we’re following is to take small parts from a big car and make them single large pieces,” Kor says. By using one piece instead of many, the car loses weight and gets reduced rolling resistance, and with fewer spaces between parts, the Urbee ends up being exceptionally aerodynamic.” How aerodynamic? The Urbee 2′s teardrop shape gives it just a 0.15 coefficient of drag.
More from Wired.
Can 3D printing revolutionize the car industry?
3D Printing Pen 3Doodler Raises $1.8M on Kickstarter from 20K Backers
Another 3D printing project has launched on crowdfunding site Kickstarter and blown away its funding goals.
3Doodler is a 3D printing pen that let’s you draw real objects in mid-air. Looking to raise $30,000 on Kickstarter, the project has already passed $1.8 million in funding from over 20,000 backers!
3Doodler is the world’s first and only 3D Printing Pen. Using ABS plastic (the material used by many 3D printers), 3Doodler draws in the air or on surfaces. It’s compact and easy to use, and requires no software or computers. You just plug it into a power socket and can start drawing anything within minutes.
Below is the video about the project. You still have 26 days to participate in their funding.
Nokia and MakerBot Showcase 3D Printing at Mobile World Congress
Over 60,000 attendees flocked the Mobile World Congress 2013 conference as it kicked off today in Barcelona. All of the major handset manufacturers, TV suppliers, and mobile operators were there with large booths. Nokia CEO Stephen Elop introduced a new line of mobile phones during his keynote, and there was quite a crowd at the Nokia invite-only booth in Hall 8.
Well, we were there too. And so was 3D printer pioneer MakerBot with several MakerBot Replicator 2s on display.
In January, Nokia announced a 3D printing development kit, or 3DK, encouraging people to hack their Lumia phone to create their own custom cases.
Today, Nokia showcased their new partnership with MakerBot on a 3D printing community project.
The 3D Printing Development Kit provides a 3D template and case specs for printing shell covers for two of Nokia’s latest smartphones – the Nokia Lumia 820 and the newly announced Nokia Lumia 520. Using the 3DK anyone with a MakerBot Replicator 2 Desktop 3D Printer can print their own shell. Nokia and Makerbot are demonstrating the exciting possibilities for 3D printing at this year’s Mobile World Congress in Barcelona, February 25-28.
“Nokia provided the Lumia 820 specs, and MakerBot optimized them for printing the case on a MakerBot Replicator 2 Desktop 3D Printer. It’s a really cool shell that fits great,” noted Bre Pettis, CEO of MakerBot. ”You can print in Nokia PLA blue, translucent white, or in any of the other numerous PLA colors. The design has a cool imprint and an oversized Nokia logo on the back.” The Nokia Lumia 3D printing files are available on MakerBot’s Thingiverse.com and will also be optimized for customization through the MakerBot Thingiverse Customizer.
Nokia is the first major phone company to release 3D templates for its hardware that can be printed on a 3D printer. It not only allows Nokia Lumia owners to personalize their phones, but brings Nokia into a whole new spectrum of innovation in the mobile phone category.
“Nokia’s design DNA is all about self-expression so getting involved in this community project is a natural extension of that philosophy,” said John Kneeland, a Nokia Community & Developer Marketing Manager. “3D printing is in an exciting development phase and we’re keen to help people explore this new technology.”
Top 3D Printing Headlines Last Week: Education, Infographic, Ears
A roundup of the top news On 3D Printing brought you from February 18 to February 24:
Wednesday, February 20
Cornell Professor Develops Technique for 3D Printing a Human Ear
3D printing organs and stem cells is currently being researched and may become a reality someday. What about 3D printing an ear using material to synthesize human cartilage?
Lawrence Bonassar, associate professor of biomedical engineering at Cornell University, has been working to solve this problem by developing a “living ink” that can be used to 3D print the cartilage for a human ear. His research was published in the journal PLoS One and featured on NPR.
“The ear is really remarkable from a mechanical perspective,” says Lawrence Bonassar, an associate professor of biomedical engineering at Cornell University who has been working with a group to develop a better replacement ear.
To make the ear, Bonassar and his colleagues scanned the ears of his twin daughters, who were 5 at the time. They used a 3-D printer to build a plastic mold based on the scan. Those printers, similar to a home inkjet, lately have also been adapted to experiment with making chocolate, guns, and even kidneys.
They then injected a soup of collagen, living cartilage cells, and culture medium. The soup congeals “like Jell-O,” Bonassar tells Shots. “All this happens quickly. You inject the mold, and in 15 minutes you have an ear ready to go.”
Well, not exactly. What they have is an ear-shaped chunk of cells that would have to be tucked under the skin on the side of the head by a plastic surgeon before it could become an ear.
To test whether their ear-mold would become living, useful ear cartilage, the researchers implanted samples under the skin on the back of laboratory rats. In three months, cartilage cells took over the collagen, making for a solid-yet-flexible chunk of cartilage that retained its precise shape and size.
Bonassar thinks this technology can be used in humans in 5 years, with any luck.
Below is a video featuring this amazing research.
Via NPR.
