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NEWS
SEMA: PVCar for your Fantasy Garage
From 3D printer to vroom in 50 hours; in California it takes longer to buy a gunDo speed cameras recognise plastic cars? It could be a major selling point for Local Motors little electric car. Other than the fact that you may soon be able to design and 3D print your next new car. It's an idea that's moving quickly from concept to reality. So quickly that Local Motors based in Chandler, Arizona is thinking that in five years you will be able to design your car, 3D print it and be driving down the road in no more than about 50 hours.
The printer is obviously large, scaled to reproduce a complete car in PVC plastic in about 44 hours. The printer bed measures 4x2 meters and can print draw lengths of up to 1 meter.
"That's for now," says Allegra West, project manager at Local Motors. "Next month we're taking delivery of a new larger printer which can print up to 2 meters in the Z direction."
The plan is to have as many as 50 micro factories set up around the US, and anyone can walk in and use the open source hardware to print their personal plastic electric car.
The PVC plastic is reinforced with carbon-fibre and flows from the printer nozzle in streams of molten plastic about the diameter of a pencil. The printer simply reproduces the car's body in rough. The shell is then traced over and cut smooth by a five-axis CNC router. "The body is very rigid and weighs about 1900 pounds (860kg). West says the plastic car is lighter than similar sized steel cars. It's also extremely rigid.
For this project, the electric motor was sourced from a Renault Twizy – a weird looking two-seater – as well as the 6.1kWh lithium-ion battery pack. The Twizy has a 60km range which the Local Motors plasticmobile or PVCar should match.
Funding for the project comes from Oakridge National Labs which is supported by the US Department of Energy. Beyond printing the car and driving in out of the SEMA show hall, West and team haven't thought about how the US Department of Transportation will react to the PVCar, the lack of bumpers, airbags or even other basic safety features. Pillows are a higher priority. The seats, after all, are hard plastic.
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Written byTodd Hallenbeck
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