Local Motors 3-D printing: Local Motors 3-D Printing Cars Is Now A Reality With Engineers From Two Companies And A National Laboratory Tirelessly Working To Assemble And Drive A 3-D Printed Car

Local Motors 3-D printing:  Local Motors 3-D Printing Cars Is Now A Reality With Engineers From Two Companies And A National Laboratory Tirelessly Working To Assemble And Drive A 3-D Printed Car

We have the latest news for you on local motors 3-D printing. The 3-D challenge seems to be revolutionizing 3-D printing in today's world. Engineers from two companies and a national laboratory are tirelessly working to assemble and drive a 3-D printed car on Saturday inside McCormick place. This self-imposed challenge was set to showcase the technology of Oak Ridge National laboratory based in Tennessee, machine maker Cincinnati Inc. and local motors, a vehicle-maker based in phoenix.

3-D printing until now is only used at a small scale in the making of house hold items and toys. The technology they are using which has cost each $1 million will finally bring 3-D printing to the floor of industrial firms mainly because of its size.

While most 3-D printing machines in the market fit on a desk, the 3-D printer in development is 6.5 feet wide and 16 feet long about the same size of a container in the back of a truck. The car is then printed on this machine. Tiny pellets are fed to the machine, pellets of plastic mixed with carbon fiber that in turn melt and come out like a soft serve of ice cream, forming a string about the size of cable wire. The resulting layers are stacked together and pressed hard enough to glue them not to break nor distort them. In total it will take more than 200 layers to make the electric car.

Oak Ridge National Laboratory's research engineer, Lonnie Love said he envisioned the technology being used by tool and die makers and also by plane, car and other companies. Love has been working on this new technology for two years now. He began with a partnership with defense contractor Lockheed Martin, who owed the part of the machine that is fed the pellets and spits out the molten material.

At first the machine was faced by many challenges but the engineers at the laboratory continued working on the technology finding the right material to work with, the right temperatures and the precise amount of pressure needed to glue the layers together. This winter the lab partnered with Cincinnati to take the technology to the market. Together, they outfitted a laser-cutting machine with the 3-D technology.

 

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