University project: Market analysis for Open Source, 3d printable car

Currently I’m a part of a project doing a market analysis for an Open Source, 3D printable car. As none of us have
much experience with car production or 3D printing, we were hoping you were willing to answer a few questions for us.

I'm aware that this is a slightly controversial subject for some, so I'm very interested in your opinion on this subject. The report we are producing will be published when it have been graded, but will sadly be written in norwegian. I might be able to translate it if there is any interest in it.

Do you believe it will be possible to print the frame, engine, suspension or drivetrain of a car? If not today, then within a decade? What is the biggest difficulty with doing this in your opinion?

Do you think 3d printing will ever come to the point where it is possible to print an entire car, either in one piece or in several parts? What kind problems would need to be solved before this is possible?

Do you think 3d printing ever will be able to compete with traditional mass production on printing complex products like cars on price and product quality? What would it actually cost to download and print a car, in material and energy usage.

Do you believe it will be possible to print the frame, engine, suspension or drivetrain of a car? If not today, then within a decade? What is the biggest difficulty with doing this in your opinion?

It is possible, however things like the cylinders of an engine require utmost precision and strength, in my opinion current 3d printing other then laser sintering won't be strong enough machines like strasys glue the layers together. It's more economical to just machine out the parts right now.

Do you think 3d printing will ever come to the point where it is possible to print an entire car, either in one piece or in several parts? What kind problems would need to be solved before this is possible?

There is a car currently being, or close to being mass produced by 3d printing. [www.wired.com] However it is too small for most, they should print a bigger version

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Do you believe it will be possible to print the frame, engine, suspension or drivetrain of a car? If not today, then within a decade? What is the biggest difficulty with doing this in your opinion?

You could print the frame today, but it would probably not be worth it. Electron Beam Melting(EBM) could be used to make parts of the frame out of titanium alloy possibly lighter than any other manufacturing process. However, there is no EBM machine big enough to print a car frame and you would need to Hot Isostatic Press(HIP) any parts of the frame that were produced to ensure that the parts don't fail from fatigue.

You could probably print the whole frame using Laser Engineered Net Shaping(LENS), as current machines are big enough to manufacturer cars. However, additional machining and post processing would probably need to be performed.

One could probably use the above processes to make a simple poor performing suspension today. If one used EBM with extensive post-processing(HIP, machining, polishing) one could probably make a great deal of the engine and drivetrain, though it probably wouldn't perform very well if everything was printed.


Laser sintering has been used to make weird shaped engine blocks, however, they probably required extensive post processing if they were used at all.

In short, you can do it today, it just isn't worth it

There are possible gains that can be made today in just using additive manufacturing to make much lighter plastic parts for vehicles that can't be made any other way. While the cost of producing such components would be more expensive, it could save more fuel over the vehicle's life.


The biggest difficulty is surface finish, most additive manufacturing processes have very bad surface finishes which is the reason for the extensive post processing required above.

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Do you think 3d printing will ever come to the point where it is possible to print an entire car, either in one piece or in several parts?

It will probably take a while. However, a switch to electric vehicles could make this a lot easier. With less moving components, one would simply need a way to incorporate electric motors, energy storage, and power electronics while the printing process was happening. It has been shown possible to print batteries and parts of fuels, and make an economic case for the latter. So one could potentially print in the energy storage. If circuit printing comes of age, then one could probably print some of the electronics, though power electronics for the motor are going to be difficult.

Though if one were to develop a sufficiently fast freeform composite printing process, one might have an economic case for printing cars, or at the very least just the frame.

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What kind problems would need to be solved before this is possible?"

The surface finish problem. The ability to print several very different materials. The ability to incorporate parts into the print. An increase in printed part strength and fatigue life. Printing rate and reliability needs to improve.

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Do you think 3d printing ever will be able to compete with traditional mass production on printing complex products like cars on price and product quality

Probably not things as complex as cars, in the short term. One will need some pretty drastic improvements to do this.

However, for simpler products, additive manufacturing might be able to compete with traditional manufacturing.

Stereolithography could potentially compete with injection molding on the basis of speed and flexibility. However, one would need to find a way to automate support removal and better resin blends that don't decay in sunlight.

Thermoplastic inkjetting, if we can figure out how to do it, might be able to compete with injection molding. While it might not be as fast, the ability to print several different thermoplastics of varying mechanical properties and color should offer enough flexibility to make it competitive. A retail store could use such a process to produce products in the store. While it may not be fast enough to produce products instantaneously on the spot, the store could use the process to continually renew inventory that has already been sold.

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What would it actually cost to download and print a car, in material and energy usage.

That would depend on what manufacturing process was used to manufacture the car and the process parameters. Generally, it's going to be more than traditional manufacturing. Thermoplastic deposition processes do tend to use about the same amount of energy as injection molding. However, there maybe less material usage if one were using titanium. Machining would use much more material than EBM.

Interestingly, using EBM to make parts out of titanium uses less energy per unit mass than SLS uses to make parts out of plastic.

Actually there already exists an EBM machine big enough to do the entire frame of the car! Currently it is being used to create the main wing center section to a near net shape in titanium. It is then CNC machined to final shape and saves tons of time and money.

@garyhlucas, that sounds like Electron Beam Direct Manufacturing(EBDM), which is the LENS process's electron beam based counterpart.

The technology exists to additive manufacture an automobile. Large manufacturers use it to prototype assemblies all the time. Same with the aerospace industry. It's not done with a Reprap, though... ;-)

There is an open source car in a build it yourself model, Local Motors. [localmotors.com] It's using traditional subtractive methods, welding, etc for the most part.

Blurb from Mashable linking to a WSJ piece behind a paywall about how 3D prining is helping Ford, GE and Mattel. [mashable.com] It says Ford envisions perhaps being able to someday have parts printed at your local dealer. That could be as disruptive to the vehicle parts supply chain as Netflix was to video rental stores or as Craigslist was to newspaper classified ad revenue.

I wouldn't dismiss the idea out of hand though doubt a printed car would be commercially viable but rather look toward the possiblities that the research might bring in other areas related to the project.

Hm. What is 3D-printing good for?

It's perfect for prototypes, proof of concepts and so on. It's dedicated to make people produce their own products at home, instead of buying them from globalized industries (saving resources though).

What are the drawbacks of 3D-printing?

It's poor for mass production and it is not cheap. Especially when it comes to metal parts.

I wouldn't combine the question about an OpenSource car with the usage of 3D-printing as a way to realize it.
In general, the idea of constructions that are under free licenses is more important, than anything else.

If the parts of a car were constructed as OpenHardware, anyone could build a car, using this parts, without the need of licensing them. This is the principle of RepRap and should be one of an OpenSource car.

3D-printing only would be a tool to exchange knowledge and ideas on the development path of the project, serving as a tool, like a milling machine or CAD-Software.

I would be very interested to participate in a project, that develops an OpenSource car. Just start a Homepage with a MediaWiki, like RepRap did, and there you go.
There are 1 million problems to solve, but thousands of people, ready and willing to solve them. And the project may give birth to new ideas for mobility, the industry never dreamed of and never will (because the ideas are not profit driven!).

Your study focuses on a market analysis, as you call it. I would say, there's no "market" for a 3D-printed OpenSource car. But that doesn't matter. The question should be: Can a community develop a car, that doesn't use any existing patents or licenses?
My opinion: It can. You would even be able to use patented parts in such a car, as long as the builder/owner produces them for its own car. The patents are public (you can view them, but have to pay to use them for business purposes), so anyone has access to the technical details. There are some key technologies, that may take quite a long time to be developed without harming existing patents. But meanwhile one could use patented techniques until the (license) free parts are available. The free parts could be produced and distributed by anyone, who knows how to produce them.

0.02 €

Robert

First of all, I would like to thank everyone who have bothered responding. I wasn't expecting this much response and feedback so quickly, and so I'm slightly overwhelmed by the response. You guys have helped us out a lot, and I really appreciate it.

I should probably clarify a few things about our project. While we are doing a market analysis, we also get credit for doing a technical analysis of how feasible our product is, which is one of the reasons I'm posting here. The other is that it's a extremely interesting subject that really caught my attention. When we chose this project, I knew very little about materials, cars or 3d printing, so it have certainly been an illuminating experience.

Gene Hacker:

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...you would need to Hot Isostatic Press(HIP) any parts of the frame that were produced to ensure that the parts don't fail from fatigue.

Is this because of metal porosity reducing the metal strength? If so, would doing the printing in a airless enviroment reduce or remove the need for HIP?

In what way does a good/bad surface finish affect material performance? What does post processing like machining and polishing involve?

How hard is it to print with different materials? Wikipedia seems to imply that it's allready in limited use today, but doesn't go into a lot of detail. I would guess that it's very hard to print materials with large melting temperature differences, like plastics and metal.

Aside from that, RobertKuhlmann mentioned legal problems. Is this something other car companies would be able to sue for, should anyone try to actually create the car? What do you think wil happen regarding intelectual property and patents, if or when 3D printing get's good enough to print a car?

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Is this because of metal porosity reducing the metal strength?

Metal porosity decreases fatigue(degradation due to oscillating stress) life. Vehicles are generally designed to have a fatigue life of forever for liability issues. A car whose frame breaks randomly is probably not a very good car. EBM is done in an airless environment(one can't shoot electron beams in air!), but HIP'ing is still required. The nature of the sintering process is responsible for a high porosity.

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In what way does a good/bad surface finish affect material performance? What does post processing like machining and polishing involve?

A bad surface finish decreases surface life and has bad wear properties. It generally isn't a good idea to make gears or other rotating machinery out of 'sandpaper.' Post-processing would probably involve milling machines, polishing machines, and fixtures to hold the printed part in said machines. Process specific tooling might needed for things like gears.

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How hard is it to print with different materials?

Very. It is simple to print with different 'inks,' but difficult to print different 'inks' in the same print. Even then it is very difficult to incorporate very different printing processes to print things like plastics together. It would be very difficult to make a printer that was able to print sinterable plastics, UV cure resins, and extrudable polymers.

We can print materials of very different melting points,like different metals and electronic sensors, using ultrasonic consolidation. However, ultrasonic consolidation has severe limitations in the geometry it can produce.


I would highly recommend that you read "Additive Manufacturing Technologies Rapid Prototyping to Direct Digital Manufacturing," by Gibson, Rosen, and Stucker

And of course the Additive Manufacturing Roadmap, to get an idea of what additive manufacturing can do, what's currently challenging, and where it's heading.

I would like to think you will take account of the enviromental impact of the idea of an Open Source / 3D printed car. There are far too many cars on the planet already and most of them are far too large.

An Open Source project offers the possibility of incorporating new ideas about mobility - including ideas to reduce the need for it.

I would be very unhappy if the only purpose of a project like this is to make it possible for people to have more cars in competition with the established manufacturers (and I don't mean to imply that the manufacturers should be protected).

I owned cars for 35 years but I have been 4 years without any now and I don't expect to need one in the future. However almost everywhere I go you can see obstacles placed in the way of pedestrians for the benefit of cars - that has to be the wrong way round for a sustainable future.

...R

Edited 2 time(s). Last edit at 09/17/2013 03:53PM by Robin2.