Jun 12, 2014
Graphite Additive Manufacturing has worked with Schumacher Racing Cars, a British manufacturer renowned worldwide for their remote control vehicles and accessories, to build a radio-controlled car almost entirely by 3D printing.
Using Schumacher's original design drawings, Graphite re-created the original injection-moulded plastic parts in this remote- controlled car using 3D printing. 90% of the original parts were created using Selective Laser Sintering (SLS) process, employing carbon fibre reinforced plastic.
The team at Graphite Additive Manufacturing says that the carbon fibre reinforced material they used has the highest stiffness-to-weight and strength-to-weight ratios of any other 3D-printed plastic. And compared to the car in standard trim, the use of 3D printing gave a weight saving of 10% on the finished 'carbon' car.
The metal components, such as shock absorbers, floor pan and nuts and bolts, along with the rubber tyres, were carried over from the standard car. Once built, the replacement parts, including bodywork, gearbox casting, suspension & steering components, aerodynamic aids and wheels, were all bolted straight on in their appropriate positions, with no addtional work required other than the tapping of threads in certain areas.
Posted in 3D Printing Applications
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i will like to be a member
alidan wrote at 6/13/2014 11:42:55 AM:
@michaelc you have to look at this for what it is, this is the pinnacle of what you can get. for headphones, 500$ will get you 95% of the way to perfect, but if you want that extra 5% you will be paying several grand for it. much like this, if you are already as good as you can get through traditional means, than you are going to pay an arm and a leg for custom.
michaelc wrote at 6/12/2014 3:21:54 PM:
Compared with the vacuforming or injection molding usually used for this sort of product, 3d printing is incredibly slow and expensive, and hardly worth it for a 10% savings in weight. Now, if you wanted to make it so you could design your own custom shell online and print it, that would make sense.
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