We've talked at length about the coming surge of 3d printing, and how it stood poised to change manufacturing forever. Here's one more example of what lies ahead. A company called Local Motors in Phoenix, AZ, just printed a drivable car, and yes, you read that correctly. Every component that could be printed, was printed. It's not that the components were printed individually, then assembled via traditional means, no. That's been done already. This car's frame and body were entirely printed from carbon fiber-reinforced plastic in a process that took about 44 hours.
Yes, But...A Plastic Car?
You might balk at the idea of a plastic car, no matter what the plastic is reinforced with, but the interesting thing is that plastic reinforced with carbon fibers is fully fifty percent lighter than steel and thirty percent lighter than aluminum, while delivering twelve times the energy absorption capabilities. In other words, a car constructed this way is literally more than an order of magnitude safer than a car fashioned of steel or aluminum, and because it's only a fraction of the weight, such a vehicle is also vastly more fuel efficient.
We Use It Already
Carbon fiber reinforced plastic is such a good bet, in fact, that it's already in widespread use in production model cars. On average, half of the components in a car are made with the stuff, which is staggering on its own, but then consider that taken together, all of those components only constitute about 10% of the car's total weight. You begin to see the advantages, I'm sure.
There Are Still Hurdles, But They're Pretty Low
It's true, 3d printers still have a few nettlesome technical hurdles to overcome. Most of the printers sold today are monoculture printers. That is to say, they've only got one print head, and it only prints in a single material. That's easy to fix, however. One can easily envision a Hydra-style print head that could rotate to different positions, allowing a different head to print a different material, all computer controlled, just as the monoculture printers are right now. We've had the technology to do that for decades, and it's just a matter of time before someone perfectly adapts it to 3d printing.
In fact, there are some early prototypes already in service. You can buy cupcakes from “Cupcake ATM's” in New York city, complete with frosting. Batter comes out of one nozzle, frosting out of the other. There's no reason at all why you couldn't sub out different materials and use the same concept. Plastic and copper, plastic and aluminum, glass and plastic. Or add a third head for even more variety. The possibilities are endless, and the number of heads can be scaled up as needed, given sufficient space to work with.
It's Looking Less Like A Fad Every Day
You may have written 3d printing off as a fad. You may have been content to watch from the sidelines, but as new barriers are broken with the technology, you'll be hard pressed to stay on the sidelines for much longer. We've already seen cars, houses, furniture, cupcakes, basic tools, and a thousand other useful objects printed from these devices. There are libraries of down-loadable objects on the internet right now, and they're growing in size by the day. The 3d printing revolution is here. Are you ready?
