Towards the *fully* 3D-printed electric cars.

GE has mass produced via 3D-printing a metal nozzle tip that would have been difficult to produce using other methods:

An Epiphany Of Disruption: GE Additive Chief Explains How 3D Printing Will Upend Manufacturing. Jun 21, 2017 by Tomas Kellner [quote]The nozzle met the team?s wildest expectations. Morris? machine not only combined all 20 parts into a single unit, but it also weighed 25 percent less than an ordinary nozzle and was more than five times as durable. ?The technology was incredible,? Ehteshami says. ?In the design of jet engines, complexity used to be expensive. But additive allows you to get sophisticated and reduces costs at the same time. This is an engineer?s dream. I never imagined that this would be possible.?[/quote]

But what I really find interesting in this article are some comments GE's additive manufacturing head Ehteshami said about what he see's for the future of 3D-printing:

[quote]?I was excited but also disturbed,? says Mohammad Ehteshami after a vendor printed an complex part for a jet engine. ?I knew that we found a solution, but I also saw that this technology could eliminate what we?ve done for years and years and put a lot of pressure on our financial model.?[/quote]

and:

[quote]Ehteshami calls his additive awakening an ?epiphany of disruption.? Says Ehteshami: ?Once you start thinking about it, you realize both intellectually and emotionally ?Oh my God, if I don?t start moving, somebody else will.? You are excited because you are an engineer, but you are also afraid because you are a human being. Both of these feelings start pulling at you to say: ?I?ve got to go, I?ve got to go.? And you start running.?[/quote]

From the way I interpret what Ehteshami is saying, it mirrors something I've been thinking. You can imagine not just cars being fully 3D-printed, but entire airplanes, tractors, construction vehicles, refrigerators, air conditioners, and everything else called "durable goods". But this would mean nearly all manufacturing jobs would be replaced by 3D-printing machines. That is a major economic disruption.

Not only that, but all these would become much cheaper. Would the companies that produce them even be billion dollar companies anymore?

Bob Clark

---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Finally, nanotechnology can now fulfill its potential to revolutionize

21st-century technology, from the space elevator, to private, orbital launchers, to 'flying cars'. This crowdfunding campaign is to prove it:

Nanotech: from air to space.

----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

An article from 2015:

GE's only being able to mass produce a complex fuel nozzle by 3D-printing, suggests the usefulness of 3D-printing for mass production is dependent on the complexity of the part.

Desktop Metal claims their production system could 3D-print one hundred small parts inches across in 4.5 hours, at a production cost of $4.25 each:

Desktop Metal Production System.

But what those parts could actually be sold for would be dependent on the complexity of the part, which is reflected in the sale price of the part. An example in this size range would be electric motors for radio controlled airplanes and drones. Depending on power rating, these small electric motors can still be priced in the hundreds of dollars range:

Brushless Motors > Model Motors Brushless.

The highest power rated motors listed there are priced at $200, while still being only inches across. So Desktop Metal 3D-printing 100 of these could sell them for a total of $20,000, while their production cost for the 100 would be only $425.

This possibility, that the DM system could 3D-print the entire electric motor, could be tested by anyone who owns a Desktop Metal Studio machine due to be available this year for single part prototyping. If so, the Desktop Metal Production machine could pay for itself in 2 days to anyone who purchased it.

Bob Clark

---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Finally, nanotechnology can now fulfill its potential to revolutionize

21st-century technology, from the space elevator, to private, orbital launchers, to 'flying cars'. This crowdfunding campaign is to prove it:

Nanotech: from air to space.

----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

By those standards black powder firearms will take over the firearms world.

I'm not saying there is not and will not be a bunch of niche users of

3D printing.

What I am saying is that 3D printing is not going to be the next industrial revolution.

--
Jim Pennino

Great, yet another techno nerd weenie who spends way too much time watching Star Trek reruns.

--
Jim Pennino

Puerile nonsense.

3D printers make parts which need to be assembled into a finished item.

The list of materials that can not and can never be printed is huge.

How do you print a spring inside of something and under compression?

Someone is watch too much scifi.

--
Jim Pennino

How do you interpret those two quotes of the head of GE's additive manufacturing division?

Bob Clark

---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Finally, nanotechnology can now fulfill its potential to revolutionize

21st-century technology, from the space elevator, to private, orbital launchers, to 'flying cars'. This crowdfunding campaign is to prove it:

Nanotech: from air to space.

----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

That for some very particular applications, i.e. complex jet engines and rocket engines, parts count can be reduced because in some applications multiple parts can be replaced with one printed part.

This is something most people have know for a very long time.

How do you print a spring inside of something and under compression which you would need to do to be able to 3D print a vehicle?

--
Jim Pennino

major limitation is, one cannot "print" higher melting temp material on lower melting point material.

ng

but

uld

Suspension can be made uncompressed and then compressed by the weight of th e vehicle sitting on it. Whether 3d printers will ever be able to turn mild steel into a spring in situ I don't know. But since millions of vehicles h ave been produced with rubber suspension your objection is entirely bogus.

NT

And just what does that really limit?

--
"Some people get lost in thought because it's such unfamiliar 
 territory." 
                                      --G. Behn

It already is for certain types of fast prototyping of intricate parts.

--
Regards, 
Martin Brown

The Desktop Metal Production system could also 3D-print an electric car motor that's at a comparable power rating to the Tesla electric motor, at ca. 400 HP:

AM Racing AMR Dual Stack 250-90 AC Motor - Liquid Cooled, Permanent Magnet - Remy [AMR 250-90D] Price: $18,488.00

Judging from $425 production cost for a run within the full production volume, this would likely be the comparable cost for a single large motor taking up the full production volume.

That a complex expensive machine at a $18,000 sale price could be 3D-printed at only a $400 production cost, would be evidence for the imminent disruptive nature of 3D-printing to manufacturing and to its ability radically reduce costs.

Bob Clark

---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Finally, nanotechnology can now fulfill its potential to revolutionize

21st-century technology, from the space elevator, to private, orbital launchers, to 'flying cars'. This crowdfunding campaign is to prove it:

Nanotech: from air to space.

----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

I suspect 3D printing at home will be as successful as the personal computer. I mean everyone knows they're useless at home and we'll only need a few major mainframes. Which reminds me, I need to tell my friends who own 3D printers and printing parts to fix things at homes, tools, and tool holders and all manner of things that I never would have thought of myself that they're wrong and no one will effectively use a 3D printer at home.

Honestly, it's pretty damn presumptuous to claim that there's no future to

3D printing at home. I suspect 10-20 years from now we'll be laughing at such claims. Like computers, it will continue to improve. It'll get faster, more capable, capable of using more materials, etc.

--
Greg D. Moore                   http://greenmountainsoftware.wordpress.com/ 
CEO QuiCR: Quick, Crowdsourced Responses. http://www.quicr.net 
IT Disaster Response -  
https://www.amazon.com/Disaster-Response-Lessons-Learned-Field/dp/1484221834/

Personal computer use in the home is dropping with increased use of smart phones for those important tasks such as posting on twitter and facebook.

How many people do you know that own 3D printers?

I know about a dozen people that own things like welders, milling machines, drill presses, and lathes but no one that owns a 3D printer.

Since no one in this thread has made that claim, your post is nonsense.

--
Jim Pennino

Most importantly it'll get cheaper.

NT

which are obviously personal computers. Total number of people using PCs is very much rising.

fairly immaterial to what the future holds. It's like saying 'how many people do you know own a TV' in 1939.

I have. And that statement of yours is a complete nonsequitur.

NT

No one said that 3D printers weren't useful. The argument is whether they'll take over traditional manufacturing. That is, everyone makes what they need at home, on their magic printer.

How many people in the US would *ever* have done such? I do this stuff too and would no more dream of printing a stencil than manufacturing my own PCBs.

Why wouldn't they just send the company the files and have them do the whole thing? That could be done today. See anyone doing it?

Personal 3D printing won't be the next industrial revolution. 3D printing is already revolutionizing engineering.