A group of 16 engineers working at Belgium’s Group T have produced what they’re calling the world’s first 3D-printed race car. The electric open-wheeler, called Areion, is pretty quick, with a 0-62 mph time of four seconds. Typical for an electric car, it rockets off the line, but in testing at the Hockenheim circuit in Germany, topped out at 87 mph.Race cars long ago pioneered the use of carbon fiber, whose incredible combination of design flexibility and light weight is the perfect combination for performance. But carbon fiber is expensive, labor-intensive, and finicky to work with, which means that 3D printing a car’s monocoque could be the future of cost-effective racing.The Group T team designed the car’s outer shell and sent plans to Materialise, whose Mammoth (yes, that’s the name) stereolithography machine can print parts 2.1 meters long by 0.8 meters high. That capability to produce massive parts allowed Group T to print their own shell, including wild features like aerodynamic dimpling and complex cooling channels for the hot electric drivetrain.The shell itself sits on a tubular steel chassis, which was fabricated the old-fashioned way, and of course the complex suspension parts, drivetrain, wheels and tires weren’t spit out of a giant printer. Still, Group T has already racked up a few awards with their ride, and while their car isn’t totally, or even mostly, 3D-printed, the body shell and its complex aerodynamic aids couldn’t have been produced as cost-effectively any other way, and that’s a breakthrough for automotive design. Heck, maybe soon your own beater will come from the factory with 3D-printed sharkskin panels to help it slip through the air.Follow Derek Mead on Twitter: @derektmead.
The Mammoth printer, via
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