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Comment by sliverstorm | Hacker News Reader

The million dollar question: are people expecting to print assembled cars?

It seems infinitely more feasible if you print the car part-by-part, but that kind of kills it for anybody unprepared to assemble a car!

(I know, I know, taking it far too seriously)

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No, but I would like to print car parts. For example, the bit of plastic that fell off the back of my rear windscreen wiper in the carwash, which undoubtedly would cost me $$$ to replace, could easily be printed by me at little cost if I had the plans for my "open source car".

I spent a ton of time years ago making molds for some of the hard-to-get plastic parts for an unusual car of mine so that I could produce my own spare parts. Simply being able to print them would be amazing.

Of course, many of those parts might have physical requirements (elastic deformation tolerance, heat resistance, et cetera) that would not be met by 3D-printed materials, so it's not a panacea.

Sure, but it might still be more cost-effective to print a shoddy non-critical part. I bet rwmj doesn't care if the wiper widget falls apart in six months if he can print another one.

(Which makes me wonder how recyclable printed parts can be made.)

Print mold. Use actual material you want. (win?)

The initial use of 3D printers was largely to produce parts that could then have moulds made from them. Moulds are pretty cheap and depending on the materials it is easier to print the part to copy than the mould, although both can work.

Leno prints his own car parts (to replace hard-to-find parts, not to save $$$): http://www.popularmechanics.com/cars/jay-leno/technology/432...

First you print a robot that will then assemble your car. Although you might need another robot to assemble the first robot..

You can already print a machine that prints other machines, but you still need a human to make the first one (for now).

http://www.makerbot.com/blog/2010/06/04/a-makerbot-self-repl...

Actually, you need a human to assemble and wire up all of them, not just the first one.

You should read Asimov's "Insert Knob A in Slot B".

edit: fixed story title, it was knob, not tab.

Do you have a link to this story/essay? I'd love to read it but I'm having a hard time finding anything authoritative about it.

I think because he's got the name off slightly, it's Insert Knob A In Hole B. As for finding a copy of it, well you should be able to do that.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Insert_Knob_A_In_Hole_B

My mistake, it's actually "Insert Knob A Into Slot B", and it's here: http://dpaste.com/692782/

The same way people organize to make an OS like Linux, people will organize to make cars.

I was going to make a joke about 'crashing' but it's actually a serious issue. What happens when people can freely build complex objects like cars where a 'bug' or unofficial 'patch' could potentially cause a risk to public safety? Is anyone culpable? How would the regulations work? Could they be enforceable?

Some people already build their cars (and car parts), 3D printing just makes it more accessible. What happens is that you have to license the car in order to be able to (legally) drive with it.

I suspect the licensing costs will prevent self made cars from becoming common.

Toyota asked me 1500 eurs for a little piece of plastic that held the front bumper.

Now I know how to make it myself on my printrbot.

I know that GM (and probably others, but I know GM for sure) has large, accurate, and very expensive 3D laser printers. It focuses lasers into a vat of resin and creates a heat-tolerant and reasonably strong car part, that can be added to an actual car and test-driven for a while before disintegrating.

If you can print car parts that means that you mastered nanotechnology. and assemblying it would be no problem, it would probably assemble itself. by printing car factory first.

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