China’s Huge 3D Printers, Soon Able to Print Automobile-Sized Metal Objects | Hacker News Reader

China’s Huge 3D Printers, Soon Able to Print Automobile-Sized Metal Objects

3dprint.com

64 pointsanigbrowl57 comments

An interesting article, but I take issue with the the opinion that "3D printing and robotics promises to change some of this, as companies can utilize industrial scale 3D printers and automation to manufacture parts for their products, cheaper than even the labor force in China can produce them. That’s if, of course China lags behind in their adoption of these technologies."

Even if China doesn't "lag behind" in the adoption of 3D printing, it will only be an advantage to them if they are significantly ahead. If you have similar-capacity 3D printers with similar operational costs in China and the US, US companies producing for the domestic market will still prefer to use the US ones to take advantage of the shorter supply chain. Chinese companies will prefer to use Chinese printers for the same reason.

I thought about this a couple of years back and as far as I can make out, we are approaching the situation where you could just about fit a digitised general engineering factory and materials store into a high street shop unit. At that point you could robotically fabricate a car to order and just drive it out the front onto the street when it is finished.

But isn't China's advantage the established (and efficient?) chain of materials supply, logistics along with the availability of cheap labor when needed?

It's about having your supply chain as close to your customer as possible so you can pull (as in lean) on demand. What then happens is the customers' needs iterate faster and faster and you need to keep up. Fit the 3d printer in the shop, print whatever the consumer needs in less then it takes to drink a cup of coffee and you're the winner. Of course you need to make sure you have enough raw materials. That's something China has to import a lot. So unless China builds up domestic demand to much higher levels, western countries will gain more from 3d printing than China.

It isn't just 'print whatever the consumer needs'. It's

- Dig it out of the ground

- process it

- Fabricate the unprintable bits

- Store all of this

- Print whatever the consumer needs in less time than it takes to drink a coffee.

So unless this make believe "shop" is fronted onto a processing/fabrication plant, which is itself, fronted on a magical mine that you can dig up any resource you like. Your scenario can never happen.*

* Or we could invent teleportation.

Yes, but no.

Yes, there's a ton of raw resource extraction, processing, and transport.

But no, because a Nissan Altima or Apple Macbook (or Moto X!) are not commodities in the same way that gold or lumber or silicon are.

There's a reason that the Nissan Altima was the sixth best-selling car last year. I don't purport to know what that reason is, but it's not because it's comprised of raw materials any different from any other car.

Cars have ridiculously much electronics in them and you cannot "print" those just like that in a small shop. Have you seen how big wnd expensive a wafer fab is?

Presumably you don't have to "print" all parts there.

What's preventing all of those electronics from becoming dumb terminals and abstracting everything away to the central processing unit?

Distributed intelligence is more robust. And the electronics need to be fast for your airbag and ABS.

I have seen what people are developing. Besides, cars do not need to have micro electronics.

http://reprap.org/wiki/MetalicaRap

http://medtechinsider.com/archives/24967

http://www.nthdegreetech.com/printed-semiconductors.php

That said, there will always be some things for which economies of scale win out against customisation, and I suspect that many electronics components are in that bracket. Luckily we have things like FPGAs, so you don't need to keep a huge stock of specialised chips to make a wide variety of devices.

I don't think there is a market for cars without micro electronics. Especially not with the rise of electric cars.

FPGA's are several orders of magnitude more expensive than mass-produced electronics.

Modern cars contain more than just controller electronics. What about image sensors, for instance, for automated parking systems? You can't 3D-print an image sensor. Not without a clean room at least.

... So there is just a never ending supply of raw material also sitting in this high street shop?

They just get a hookup to the Feed, of course.

You keep a stock of base materials and things like chips that you can't fabricate onsite.

Is the same as keeping stock for a normal shop, you keep track of what is being used and order more when it gets low.

What's interesting, but kind of glossed over in the article, is it's not just your typical plastic 3D printer. This thing prints metal objects, which could conceivably be used for car parts.

Apparently there's a key patent that's just expired[1] that some claim will have a big impact on the market. I'm not in a position to comment but, if true, this could be a very exciting time when 3D-printing moves out of the 'Rapid Application Prototyping' stage and becomes a realistic proposition to manufacture durable, high-quality items.

[1] http://www.extremetech.com/extreme/175562-major-patent-expir...

The article mentions that they use them for aerospace components, including landing gear. I wonder what the strength of these parts are compared to traditional manufacturing techniques. Can these parts be used for actual structural elements?

For something critical like landing gear, or say car suspension components, I would highly doubt the use of 3D printed parts, at least in the near term with current production methods. Right now, most parts like this will be forged rather than cast, because there is a higher likelyhood of defects and generally lower strength in cast parts.

They can, but the expense of using this as a mfg process is generally prohibitive. I've read there are some advanced aerospace parts such as turbine blades w/ complex hollows or internal parts that require very advanced castings that it actually makes sense to use SLS as a build method.

A good example of part-strength is the 1911 Solid Concepts in Austin printed late last year[0]. They used a EOSINT M 270, a pretty advanced and expensive SLS printer. [1]

For reference, that 1911 ran about $600k in build cost. yeesh.

[0] - http://www.thetruthaboutguns.com/2013/12/robert-farago/gun-r... [1] - http://gpiprototype.com/services/eosintm270.html

Even if you could handle the end product strength (and they can ... sort of), there are a lot more problems dealing with metal than plastic.

First, metal is a LOT heavier to throw around than plastic. So, your control systems have to be dramatically bigger.

Second, the melting points of metals are way higher than plastic, so the energy required to be right at a critical point of flow/melt is a lot bigger. Not to mention the percentage difference between melted and not melted is a lot smaller.

Third, a lot of the metal techniques are about melting metal in place. That means that the part is buried in a block of powdered metal. That block of powdered metal is a significant fraction of the weight and cost of a plain old hunk of whatever the metal is. Try imagining fabricating even a small gold part out of a powdered block of 6"x6"x6" of gold--now think about how many metals are WAY more expensive than that.

Finally, powdered metal is explosive. Most machines working with powdered metal require nitrogen atmosphere pump down and if there is a leak ... KABOOM.

For those of us who've been exploring current 3D printing tech, presumably including the audience for this site, that isn't really news as such. Also, the article does specifically mention laser sintering, another clue if you're familiar with the current major printing technologies.

A quick look through the materials catalog at Shapeways[1] will give an idea of some of the available technologies and things that are possible, and that still doesn't touch on what's going on with the more industrial-scale technologies as referenced in the article.

[1] http://www.shapeways.com/materials?li=nav

Why would you want to 3D print a car part when you can just make one with a CNC machine? CNC machines are cheaper, more precise, and are already established.

The advantage of 3D printing comes with making very complex shapes. As far as I know, most parts in a car are pretty straightforward (gears, shafts, pistons etc.). Am I off-base?

Because nobody uses CNC machines like that.

The problem with metal fabrication is that a good CNC machine is at least $50,000 and more normally $250,000 or so. Combine the fact that the shop owner wants that machine running 24/7 to make bank, the fact that an error in the steel can cost you $20,000 in raw materials, and the fact that a single programming bug can damage the machine and you have a recipe for very constrained, conservative usage.

Contrast this to 3D printers: "Huh. That sucked. I'll print it again." Material lost: Under $1000. Machine damage: Nil. So, you'll print all manner of crap until you get it right.

swarf

Yes, but here in the US we invested hundreds of billions in a housing bubble, rather than productive capital investment. Consuming all the seed corn will keep us competitive, right?

Oh, please: https://www.google.com/search?client=ubuntu&channel=fs&q=emp...

oh, please: http://www.skepticblog.org/2011/02/10/chinas-ghost-cities/

Edit: Note people said the EXACT same thing about china "building roads no body needs" in the early nineties. Now china are running license plate lotteries in order to keep traffic bearable. Just have a sense of scale, when you are trying to migrate 350 million people into urban centres, you need to build a lot of houses.

This is too simplistic. There are still roads in china that aren't used much, while inner city infrastructure is insufficient. Also, many houses that are built are villas that farmers from the country side can't afford; Beijing has a lot of empty apartments and a housing shortage at the same time.

Okay, show me a google maps image of a 'ghost city' and I'll zoom it out 2 notches and show you it's (barely) a 'suburb' of a bigger city.

Show me the a google maps image of a road that is a under used, and I'll find a bigger road in the US that is used less.

People buying houses and not living in them isn't "china building ghost cities" that's "people buying houses and not living in them".

By all means believe western propaganda all you like, but given you live/work in china I'm surprised you don't see it for what it is.

A "ghost city" is not a ghost city because there is no one to live in it, but there is no one that can afford to live in it. A lot of property is also bought for speculation given that China lacks a property tax.

As for highways, truckers avoid the ones that are heavily tolled, leading to heavily congested non-tolled roads (so called 7 day traffic jams...). And have you ever seen a road as empty as Beijing's 6th ring road?

So your issue is with poverty, and culture not with infrastructure?

GDP/capita is pretty shitty in china, I agree. Because time/money ratio is so crap, people are prepared to spend time, to save/earn more money, hence toll roads being an issue, and house speculation being an issue.

But no other country has increased GDP/capita faster than china (and on the scale china has) in the history of GDP/capita records.[0]

So exactly what are we criticising?

[0] http://www.gapminder.org/world/#$majorMode=chart$is;shi=t;ly...,

> Because time/money ratio is so crap, people are prepared to spend time, to save/earn more money, hence toll roads being an issue, and house speculation being an issue.

The point is that infrastructure investments are often misdirected, poorly thought out, or plain corrupt. China needs "affordable" housing, not property as "speculation opportunities" (and given that there are so few ways to invest money, this is what happens anyways). China needs low logistic costs, but has some of the highest in the world even with their "great" infrastructure; toll roads represent great skimming opportunities for officials and their families. Truck drivers are stuck in a crappy situation where they are forced to overload their trucks just to make ends meet, and hope the fines on the way (justified or not) don't bankrupt them.

> So exactly what are we criticising?

We were arguing about whether China's infrastructure investments were wise or not.

> toll roads represent great skimming opportunities for officials and their families

Okay, provide some evidence government officials are 'skimming' from (all) toll roads. That's a pretty big claim, and as far as I can tell, the tolls are either private companies or government run tolls, that isn't corruption, that's taxation and enterprise.

So they don't have affordable housing because they don't allow enough things to invest in?

All truck drivers have to overload their trucks, and hope they don't get fined?

China's a big place, are you sure your statements apply across the whole nation. Or are you pretty much referring to domestic problems in a particular city?

Housing is not affordable in the Bay Area (SF)... is that also because they don't have enough to invest in?

Truck drivers the world over, are over worked, under paid, and have to resort to drugs, over loading, and sleep avoidance to make it... Is that because of corrupt toll road owners?

China has (some) the highest logistic costs in the world? Are you sure about that? Can I see a chart of 'world logistic costs'?

> the tolls are either private companies or government run tolls, that isn't corruption, that's taxation and enterprise.

How do you think business works in China? All of these infrastructure projects are deeply guangxi based, and there is no better guangxi than family (e.g. how all the taxi companies in Beijing are run by official relatives).

> So they don't have affordable housing because they don't allow enough things to invest in?

Most housing is not built for people to live in, its built as investment vehicles for rich people. This is true even in 2nd tier cities, not just the first tier ones. Its a country wide problem that the government is trying to tackle.

> China has (some) the highest logistic costs in the world? Are you sure about that? Can I see a chart of 'world logistic costs'?

About 5X of developed country logistic rates. Sure, India might be higher, but China's "great" infrastructure should have lowered logistic costs to developed country levels, and it it hasn't yet (mainly due to corruption).

[1] http://www.chinadaily.com.cn/business/2012-04/25/content_151...

2stop, you've been hell banned for some reason, not sure why.

Many western pundits also poopoo'd their HSR efforts, now it's one of the busiest and best rail networks in the world.

If you build things the market is not demanding, however dumb, eventually someone will use these things. Low demand means low prices, even if these prices are too low to justify the investment.

Everything has a clearing price, a price that will draw buyers and get it sold.

Of course, if prices are held artificially high, it will take forever.

Hmm, I did not consider that. I guess we'll see in a decade or two. My opinion is that many of these constructions will go unused - permanent relocation is a lot harder than just using roads, plus no doubt most of them have already been bought for resale (increasing the price) or rent (which may be more acceptable). Also, there are whole apartment blocks in or near major cities that are still unused despite demand, it's not just ghost cities.

I was wondering, are 3D-printed objects more fragile compared to similar objects being created with classical methods? For example, some metallic parts, or say, the foundations of a house.

No. 3D printers enable feats of engineering that would be impossible without their availability.

You don't need to make the plastic part in two pieces so that a screw can fit into one of them, for example.

House foundations are 3d printed in a sense... The dots of plastic are just larger and take longer to dry ;)

You're not addressing the strength or fragility of the artifacts though.

Some 3D printed objects are actually superior for strength, for example plastic with a honeycomb interior can have an amazing strength/weight/cost.

The answer is 'it depends'. There are a variety of processes and materials that are called 3D printing. For plastic fused deposition modeling (like the Makerbot), objects can be comparable to say, injection molded parts, which is a more common plastic production method. For metal, selective laser sintering is the most common method, and the parts it produces have different (and probably inferior in most cases) properties than cast/forged/machined parts. There's way too much variety on either side of the coin to say which is more fragile.

I know that reinforced concrete is often used in construction, so I figured that printing a huge house would make it more fragile, say, during an earthquake.

From what I've anecdotally heard, SLS parts are actually stronger than a cast part of the same shape.

Makerbot parts can be considerably weaker than injection molded parts because of issues with delamination between layers.

NASA have put a 3d printed exhaust port on a rocket engine and test fired it successfully. - http://www.nasa.gov/exploration/systems/sls/j2x/3d_print.htm...

Besides, as long as you know what you are doing it is just another material to select from and you just calculate critical dimensions based on measured properties.

Solid Concepts built a 1911 pistol with a 3D printer. The barrel has to withstand 23,000 psi pressure (to comply with SAAMI specs), so it's a stressed part, for sure.

http://www.cnn.com/2013/11/08/tech/innovation/3d-printed-met...

Not one person has mentioned in the comments the fact that 3D printing something takes a LONG time. Not exactly the kind of machine that you are going to put on an assembly line. Probably much more effective for printing large prototypes. Just like 3D printing is used for today.

If the United States and other countries can produce their own goods with 3D printing, wouldn't that hurt China's export business? What good is a mass of 3D printers and hundreds of millions of people without work?

    > wouldn't that hurt China's export business?

People in China build cool stuff like people in other places.

    > What good is a mass of 3D printers and hundreds of
    > millions of people without work?

We could build self-replicating drone factories, use them to terraform Mars, and some people could colonise it. That'd be cool.

I was wondering if someone that knows much about 3D printing on a larger scale could chime in here: http://ideas.techendo.co/ideas/2

...the future is bright.

you wouldn't...

You wouldn't, but the Chinese definitely would:)

prelude to the industrial replicator!

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