New Way of building bodies

[fluidfloyd]

Ok, this is not really a T body but a look at the possibilities of producing complex shaped car bodies. You never know as it could get cheaper in the near future.Enjoy!

George

http://web.ornl.gov/sci/manufacturing/media/news/detroit-show/

 

[choppinczech]

This technology is so cool.

I'm hoping to make one of my side mirrors as a prototype. Something like this.





Then have it scanned, reversed, and have them reproduced in this way.



We'll see. It might end up way too expensive.

 

[Hotrod46]

George, they're even working on a 3D printer that is large enough to print a house! I saw something about that the other day. It uses concrete instead of plastic. The whole thing is portable, so it can be moved to the jobsite. Design your house in CAD and stand back while the machine lays it down. The results are a little crude right now, but you can bet it'll get better.

 

[James C]

Pretty cool but I would much rather my tax dollars be sent back to me to work on my own projects than the department of energy using them to build it's self a cobra. Let's leave this kind of thing to private industry.

 

[fluidfloyd]

George, they're even working on a 3D printer that is large enough to print a house! I saw something about that the other day. It uses concrete instead of plastic. The whole thing is portable, so it can be moved to the jobsite. Design your house in CAD and stand back while the machine lays it down. The results are a little crude right now, but you can bet it'll get better.

Not sure if it was the same article I saw recently but it looks pretty interesting. The cost of this technology will and has already come down quite a bit. At the current cost to have an all aluminum sports car style body hand formed and finished out in the US is somewhere in the $60,000 range. To build several gives you no discount as it is pretty much all labor. I'm betting this will be a viable option if not already. We have been talking to a company about doing a full body scan of a 50s area car just to generate the body bucks and it's not that bad. The Kirkam Cobra was the result of a body scan model. Once they had the scan they realized the car varied left to right. I'm sure every Cobra built varied but no more as they corrected the model before generating the bucks and forming tools. Guess we will just have to wait and see! Take Care.

George

 

[fluidfloyd]

Pretty cool but I would much rather my tax dollars be sent back to me to work on my own projects than the department of energy using them to build it's self a cobra. Let's leave this kind of thing to private industry.

James...I'm not sure how they came to picking the Cobra to produce but projects like this are usually designed to develop the tools and technology in conjunction with private sector in hopes that it will filter down for street consumer use. These young people today would do well in getting into these types of projects as most of them have no interest to work in a shop or embrace manual labor for a career.
The government does waste a unbelievable amount of money but I see these types of projects as beneficial to all sectors of manufacturing. I will probably get a new upper partial denture soon and they ask me if I would consider nylon instead of metal. I said I would prefer it as I realized it would flex and be much more comfortable. It will be printed! 3D printing has literally exploded in the past year and is not anywhere near it's full development. Money well spent in my opinion. Much better then most of the crap the congress comes up with on a regular bases! OK, I'm through. Take care.

George

 

[James C]

George have you heard of the Launch Pad in NLR? http://www.arhub.org/

 

[Hotrod46]

The Kirkam Cobra was the result of a body scan model. Once they had the scan they realized the car varied left to right. I'm sure every Cobra built varied but no more as they corrected the model before generating the bucks and forming tools.

It doesn't surprise me that the Cobras varied in body dimensions. A few years ago I was looking at restoring an Austin-Healey 100-6. It needed fenders all the way around. Replacements are available, but apparently the fenders were select fitted at the factory from a large assortment. The chances of finding another fender that will fit without a lot of rework are slim. I doubt the Cobras were built with any more care toward standard dimensions.

 

[Francis Blake]

My youngest son (36) recently bought a 3d printer and is making all sorts of items. It's a small one so it will not do a large project but only cost $300, and they keep getting cheaper

 

[rbsWELDER]

George - The Time Lapse Videos were very cool!

Mark

 

[fluidfloyd]

George have you heard of the Launch Pad in NLR? http://www.arhub.org/

James...No, I had not heard about this program. As I am still in Kansas and the Little Rock newspaper is a subscription for online viewers I don't get much news from that area. I glanced over a little of it last night but will look through it completely later this week. Thanks for posting it. This 3D technology is growing daily. If any of you have access to a printer and are aviation heads here is a link to a future download of a very famous aircraft. I'm looking for a source to print it as we speak. I'll be in touch.

George

http://www.popularmechanics.com/flight/a15315/you-can-soon-print-chuck-yeagers-x-1-at-home/

 

[fluidfloyd]

It doesn't surprise me that the Cobras varied in body dimensions. A few years ago I was looking at restoring an Austin-Healey 100-6. It needed fenders all the way around. Replacements are available, but apparently the fenders were select fitted at the factory from a large assortment. The chances of finding another fender that will fit without a lot of rework are slim. I doubt the Cobras were built with any more care toward standard dimensions.

Much like our Scarab bodies. Not sure about the Cobras as they were built in England. The racers for Shelby were all aluminum and I assumed hand formed but I could be wrong. Even if they were stamped they probably took a lot of hand massaging to align them to a tubular skeleton body truss.

George

 

[ChrisK]

We got one of those Makerbot 3d printers at the shop. Every month they come out with a new type of plastic for the thing. We actually use it for building assembly fixtures. Last September I went to the International Machine Tool Show in Chicago. They 3d printed a car at one of the demonstration booths. This technology is moving fast I think its safe to say it will replace a lot of manufacturing processes. Think what a pain it is to cast an intake manifold. You are limited by the casting technique. Now you can print one a a few hours with a design that would be impossibly difficult to cast. Another machine manufacturer had a machine that spray arced a big chunk of metal then 5 axis machined it into a boat propeller.