Comment by crwalker | Hacker News Reader

Comment by crwalker | Hacker News Reader

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What happened to 3D printing (ran and sold a small startup in this space):

We realized that the vision of a 3D printer in every house was absurd. Consumer ≠ designer. Amazon is cheaper, faster, easier, higher quality unless I am putting on my design/engineering hat and doing R&D/NPI.

We realized that 3D printers are just manufacturing tools, albeit really interesting ones. They belong in places where you might find CNC machines, laser cutters, etc.

3D printing is quietly revolutionizing small areas of R&D/NPI/MFG in every field. For instance, small to medium volume end part manufacturing: https://www.jabil.com/insights/blog-main/3d-printing-reality...

Lots of technologies are maturing and costs are coming down as the ecosystem moves from a high margin low volume prototyping mindset to a low margin high volume manufacturing mindset (look up MJF, EBAM, DMLS, EBM, CLIP, LOM, etc. in addition to the well known FDM and SLA technologies).

I second this. I'm part of an university team building a racecar and we mostly use additive manufacturing for carbon fibre parts that are difficult to lay by hands, such as the intake and certain wings. For this we just need basic polymers. It's a cost issue.

However, this year we are starting to build functional components. We are looking at printing the brake cooling ducts - they need to survive 200 C and 400 bar.

Some better funded teams print their uprights (the part joining the wheels to the frame) in titanium (https://www.reddit.com/r/FSAE/comments/6acr6d/amazing_additi...). The part is strengthened by annealing it.

The biggest problem in AM right now that I hear about is "how do we scale up"? Batches are very small and take a long time - to be truly useful, one needs to print a part in minutes, not days.

> 400 bar

Say what now? Unless it's a misprint, that restrictive a cooling system sounds like it flows basically no air?

That'd gave to be 400psi, or maybe kPa. 400 bar is more than most hydraulics run at.

Most race car brake cooling air ducts are made of silicone and rated to at most 20psi (125kPa). Brake cooling ducts are powered primarily through ram air effect, and cost a few bucks a foot.

Not sure what OP is referring to, but if they're talking about a replacement to the 10-12cm high-temp diameter silicone air hose that typically gets routed to just front of brake rotors (and rated to 230C sustained, 260C intermittent), those measurements are MUCH higher than anything I've seen on genuine, real race cars, including WEC prototypes.

Now, the initial ducting may be made of a composite (including carbon fiber), which obviously can be tremendously strong, but the last bit of it is usually silicone.

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