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Tuesday, September 9, 2014

Engineers building car with 3-D printer at McCormick Place - Chicago Tribune

Tucked in a corner inside McCormick Place engineers from two companies and a national laboratory are furiously working on the final days of a challenge to make, assemble and drive a 3-D printed car on Saturday.

The self-imposed challenge showcases the technology of Oak Ridge National Laboratory in Tennessee, machine-maker Cincinnati Inc. and Local Motors, a vehicle-maker based in Phoenix. 

Until now, 3-D printing has been used in a small scale to make parts, household items or toys. Their technology, which has cost each more than $1 million, would finally bring 3-D printing to the floor of industrial firms, mainly because of its size, they said.

The car is being printed on a machine that is about 6.5 feet wide and 16 feet long, or about the size of a container in the back of truck. By comparison, most of the 3-D printing machines in the market fit on a desk.

The machine is fed tiny pellets of plastic mixed with carbon fiber. The pellets melt and come out like soft serve ice cream, forming a string about the size of cable wire. The layers are stacked together and pressed hard enough to glue them, but not break them or deform them. In total, it will take more than 200 layers to make the body of the electric car.  

Lonnie Love, a research engineer at Oak Ridge National Laboratory, said he envisions the technology being used initially by tool and die makers and later by companies that make planes, cars and other products.

Love said he's been working on the technology for about two years. It started with a partnership with defense contractor Lockheed Martin, which owned the part of the machine that is fed the pellets and spits out the molten material. Lockheed Martin had attached the part to a robotic arm, but it wasn't working.

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