Engineer Jim Kor and his design for the Urbee 2.
Photo: Sara Payne
Picture an assembly line not that isn’t made up of robotic arms
spewing sparks to weld heavy steel, but a warehouse of plastic-spraying printers
producing light, cheap and highly efficient automobiles.
If Jim
Kor’s dream is realized, that’s exactly how the next generation of urban
runabouts will be produced. His creation is called the Urbee 2 and it could
revolutionize parts manufacturing while creating a cottage industry of
small-batch automakers intent on challenging the status quo.
Urbee’s approach to maximum miles per gallon starts with
lightweight construction – something that 3-D printing is particularly well
suited for. The designers were able to focus more on the optimal automobile
physics, rather than working to install a hyper efficient motor in a heavy
steel-body automobile. As the Urbee shows, making a car with this technology has
a slew of beneficial side effects.
Jim Kor is the engineering brains behind the Urbee. He’s
designed tractors, buses, even commercial swimming pools. Between teaching
classes, he heads Kor Ecologic, the firm responsible for the 3-D printed
creation.
“We thought long and hard about doing a second one,” he 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 printer sprays molten polymer to build the chassis layer
by microscopic layer until it arrives at the complete object. The machines are
so automated that the building process they perform is known as “lights out”
construction, meaning Kor uploads the design for a bumper, walk away, shut off
the lights and leaves. A few hundred hours later, he’s got a bumper. The whole
car – which is about 10 feet long – takes about 2,500 hours.
Photo: Sara Payne
Besides easy reproduction, making the car body via FDM affords
Kor the precise control that would be impossible with sheet metal. When he
builds the aforementioned bumper, the printer can add thickness and rigidity to
specific sections. When applied to the right spots, this makes for a fender
that’s as resilient as the one on your Prius, but much lighter. That translates
to less weight to push, and a lighter car means more miles per gallon. And the
current model has a curb weight of just 1,200 pounds.
Read more at - http://www.wired.com/autopia/2013/02/3d-printed-car/
Read more at - http://www.wired.com/autopia/2013/02/3d-printed-car/
