Fully 3D Printed DIY electric car

Balmorhea said:
3D printing is the hot glue gun of early 21st century

Balmo - I feed my habits and family by un-fuscrambling other people's wiring and mechanical "hotglu" jobs, every day sees more new stuff. If this keeps up (and I encourage it) I will be able to buy my adult child their own house.
 
I find this concept very interesting, 3d printing is a developing technology and I feel with the correct materials we will eventually be able to create very strong complex structures, we just need a bit of vision. Can anyone on this forum remember the 1950's Lotus Elite which was a very light fiberglass monocoque with no chassis and of course we have modern hyper-cars using moulded carbon-fiber sections held together with glue.
 
Torchy said:
I find this concept very interesting, 3d printing is a developing technology and I feel with the correct materials we will eventually be able to create very strong complex structures, we just need a bit of vision.

There is a lot of potential there for sure. This will give home builders a relatively quick and relatively easy means to try new ideas that the major automakers do not dare touch.

Can anyone on this forum remember the 1950's Lotus Elite which was a very light fiberglass monocoque with no chassis

Yes. Almost no modern cars come close to it in terms of weight...

and of course we have modern hyper-cars using moulded carbon-fiber sections held together with glue.

...that weigh 4,000 lbs because they are loaded with extraneous luxury features to pad in more margins and "justify" the astronomical purchase price, and are also built to accommodate seating the morbidly obese Boobus Americanus, all at the expense of ultimate performance and efficiency... when steel body on steel frame sports cars from 5+ decades prior are half the weight.

So much wasted potential...
 
There is a lot of potential there for sure. This will give home builders a relatively quick and relatively easy means to try new ideas that the major automakers do not dare touch.

I don't know if this is going to be quick and easy. :lol: :lol: :lol:
I have estimated the printing time around 400 to 500 hours that is about a month printing... :shock: Well with 2 bigger size printers time will be reduced to a week or so.
 
Back to the topic:

I always promise myself that when designing a vehicle the first area is going to be the front steering/suspension geometry, but always I break my promise .... :(
So the front end knuckles have been ones of the lasts parts I have designed.
It was not in my mind to 3D print them and provably use CNC aluminium parts or similar.
But I was given the opportunity to test the nTopology platform for 7 days. Although it is a quite complex software due to its enormous capabilities, I was able to perform topology optimisation to the knuckles.
The people of nTopology liked the project and gave me some extra time to further work in them.

And here is what come out. It still may need some refinement but they will be something like this:
 

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j bjork said:
This looks interesting :thumb:
So the plan is to make a lot of small pieces and join them together?
How are they supposed to join together, only glue?

Thank you Bjork.
Yes, lots of small parts joined.
I am working on a chemical welding product and procedure, in order to make the joints very strong.
 
More info about the DIY 3D PRINTED CAR. Today components, components and more components.
https://youtu.be/TADWhQN0rzM

[youtube]TADWhQN0rzM[/youtube]
 
How much money you willing to spend?

goatman said:
a new youtube to follow :thumb:
ive been waiting for a reason to get a 3-d printer
how big of a printer will i need
any recommendation for one?
 
its not what im willing to spend

i like getting used stuff that is known to be reliable
parts that are readily available and reasonable
kind of like a 350 chev instead of a Tesla
 
999zip999 said:
I think you should put a little electric motor in those cute little cars with an RC remote control.

That will be cool.
You are really welcome to modify it and add all the RC things into it.
You can download the STL files from here: https://www.prusaprinters.org/prints/47678
And you can download on any format, or modify the 3D design here: https://cad.onshape.com/documents/e88854e0f694e95508aed56c/w/c09b93324fe9abec278f257b/e/92bf3a86baf43a454fb6d9f9

Please let me know if you do so.
 
Here is just an example of the future of 3D printing being largerprinters, not stitching smaller parts together. Some 10 years ago a college built a car out of something like particle board and the whole thing collapsed under its' own weight before it was finished. Good thing they weren't driving it. Your glued together parts are going to be a question mark.

[youtube]XHSYEH133HA[/youtube]
 
Buildings have been always made using additive manufacturing processes. The only difference with that, is that a machine is doing the job it instead of men.

Yes it will be easier and faster to print it in a few parts using a huge printer, but:
This is an OpenSource project so if I use custom machines or not easy available machinery it will not be OpenSource anymore...
And more important, I do not have a huge 3D printer or the resources to access to one.
I am working on a chemical welding product and procedure, in order to make the joints very strong. Far stronger than the parts themselves; If you are worried about that...
 
_GonZo_ said:
I am working on a chemical welding product and procedure, in order to make the joints very strong. Far stronger than the parts themselves; If you are worried about that...

This part of your project will be quite interesting.

If you were using ABS plastic, acetone would be great for welding the parts together. For a 3D printed quadcopter frame I mixed acetone with ABS to make a kind of solvent slurry which then could be used to glue parts together.

7139441404414312342.jpg


This resulted in joints that were stronger than the pieces they were connecting. Unfortunately, ABS is not an easy material to print without warping, unless you have a heated print chamber.

These days I am mostly printing with PETG plastic and it would be nice to have a glue like I had with ABS, though I haven't researched this topic much.
 
Addy said:
This part of your project will be quite interesting.

If you were using ABS plastic, acetone would be great for welding the parts together. For a 3D printed quadcopter frame I mixed acetone with ABS to make a kind of solvent slurry which then could be used to glue parts together.

This resulted in joints that were stronger than the pieces they were connecting. Unfortunately, ABS is not an easy material to print without warping, unless you have a heated print chamber.

These days I am mostly printing with PETG plastic and it would be nice to have a glue like I had with ABS, though I haven't researched this topic much.

That is the idea; To use a similar chemical welding as it is used for ABS or PVC.
I have good news, after dusting off my organic chemical knowledge, I think have found the right mix of solvents and fillers to create a similar product to be used in PLA (It looks like it can works as well on PETG). It still needs some refinement in order to get the right proportions of solvents/fillers, and the right fillers in order to get the right joint elasticity. But it actually works, and the first tests looks very promising.

More info in following days.
 
Great project! — I’ll be following your YouTube journey closely. I’m also working on a micro EV project, using a Greenspeed Glyde as the base.
 
I managed to design a glue for PLA plastic that actually creates stronger bondings than epoxy ones.
More than a glue is a chemical welding product. It is made with a solvent (Dichloromethane) PLA as filler.
It really works well in PLA, PLA+ and PETG but need some more test in this last one.
I am now working in the proportions (Filler/Solvent) in order to get the best results and easy to use.
Made a vido comparing different bonding systems:

[youtube]5LqmyYqS6-k[/youtube]
https://youtu.be/5LqmyYqS6-k
 
First parts just come out of the printer (door parts+), all looks good so far.
Next step chemical welding.
 

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Here is a picture of one of the parts in a section cut, so you can see how they are inside.
As you can see the parts are almost hollow (See picture) with an internal gyroid estructure. The walls of the parts varies from around 1.2mm to 3.9mm and the infill from 9% to 15% of the volume, depending on the stress of the area.
So parts are quite light and strong.
The panels that compose the unibody and door have a thickness from 10mm to 20mm depending on how much stress that area has to handle.
 

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