US company Local Motors expects its 3D printed car, unveiled last month, to soon receive approval to drive on roads.
The ABC reports that the vehicle weighs roughly 1,000 kilograms and is made of only
49 parts (or 64, depending on the report). This compares to a regular car’s
approximately 5,000.
The
body of the car was printed over two days and then driven at last month’s International Manufacturing Technology Show at Chicago. It is printed out of
ABS plastic reinforced with carbon fibre.
Local
Motors’ Engineer James Earl said the time from design to building was only four
months, and that the limited number of parts had another advantage.
“The thing
that this lends most to is customisation-ality, so you can get a car that
really suits your needs with very little monetary input from the design side,”
he told the ABC of the car, which Local Motors hopes to sell for $US 20,000.
The machine used
to print the car – the Big Area
Additive Manufacturing Machine (BAAM) – made by
Cincinnati Inc. in collaboration with Oak Ridge National Laboratory, is reportedly
able to lay down 40 pounds of plastic per hour.
The car created
at IMTS was named the Strati (Italian for “layers”) and recently won the Popular Mechanics Breakthrough Award for 2014.
Image: Local Motors