Tag Archives: car

Top 3D Printing Headlines Last Week: 3Doodler, Chris Dixon, Nokia, Car

3Doodler Kickstarter 3D Printing

A roundup of the top news On 3D Printing brought you from February 25 to March 3:

Monday, February 25

Tuesday, February 26

3D Printed Car Urbee 2 Announced: Light, Aerodynamic, and Custom Made

3D Printed Car Urbee

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?

The First 3D Printed Car Optimizes Design for Renewable Energy

KOR EcoLogic Urbee

How do you design the most efficient car on the road that can run on renewable energy? You prototype, a lot, with 3D printing.

That is what KOR EcoLogic did using Autodesk software and Stratasys’ digital manufacturing service. The car, called Urbee, gets 200 miles per gallon.

“The Urbee was designed from the ground up to be as efficient as possible, and to run on renewable energy,” said Jim Kor, president and chief technology officer of KOR EcoLogic. “From concept through rendering, Autodesk software helped us not only build an efficient and sustainable car, but also communicate our designs to a broader audience, including potential investors.”

Urbee is truly the first car to have its entire body 3D printed.

The KOR EcoLogic team began by developing a set of core principles and pinning them to their workshop wall. Among them, the Urbee was designed to use minimal energy and produce less pollution during its design, manufacturing, operation and recycling stages, while remaining affordable and visually appealing.

“Startup clean tech companies need technology enabling them to create professional, fully realized and tested designs, while benefiting from visually stunning imagery of their products,” said Robert “Buzz” Kross, senior vice president, Autodesk Manufacturing Industry Group. “KOR EcoLogic is a great example of the combined power of Digital Prototyping and sustainable design.”

The Urbee team used Autodesk Inventor software to design a 3D digital prototype of the car’s body and subject it to simulated road and wind conditions, test different body designs to minimize drag and reduce overall weight by eliminating excess parts. More than 80 percent of a product’s environmental impact can be determined during the design phase, making Inventor a critical component in establishing the Urbee’s high level of environmental responsibility. KOR EcoLogic used Autodesk Showcase 3D visualization software to create photorealistic renderings of the Urbee for marketing to potential investors, partners and the general public.

Below is a video of the Urbee on a test drive.

 

Via dexigner.

Futuristic Shopping Experiences: 3D Printing Transforms Retail [Video]

As 3D printing technology enters the mainstream market, retail shopping experiences will be transformed dramatically. Physical products can be printed on demand in a similar manner that consumers print out digital photos today.

Below is a video from Materialise that shows a large part for a car being printed out and prepped for assembly. While today this technology is in the lab, tomorrow it could be in your local pharmacy or copy shop.