[Steverino]

Interesting and fun.

https://localmotors.com/3dprintedcar/

 

[chrisvillar98]

What I think will be awesome will be when they can print a car that will pass crash safety standards. I'm not saying that tongue in cheek. I've used 3D printers and you can engineer parts in ways that you cannot with traditional materials. There is no way to mold plastic with an energy absorbing honeycomb structure for instance but it is a piece of cake with printed parts. That's a single example. You can make these parts lighter and stronger than traditional plastics by carefully engineering an internal truss type structure.

That car body is a single piece of plastic and probably much lighter than it looks. If engineered thoroughly, it could be incredibly strong and tough too.

 

[Steverino]

I've used 3D printers and you can engineer parts in ways that you cannot with traditional materials. There is no way to mold plastic with an energy absorbing honeycomb structure for instance but it is a piece of cake with printed parts.

In one of the videos you can see that they printed a honeycomb type structure into otherwise hollow components.