The spoiler on a future Ford vehicle you buy could be 3D-printed. Ford Motor revealed on Monday that they’ve started testing 3D printing of massive parts, using tech offered by 3D printing industry giant Stratasys. The pilot task is created to learn how Ford might be able to utilize 3D printing to make large parts, tooling and parts at relatively small volumes, where it generally would not make good sense to even trouble because of how much it would cost.
Whether these tests with Stratasys’ commercial-grade Infinite Build 3D printer work out, that could open up an entire new world of opportunity for niche auto lines, lorry upgrade options and more. That’s really helpful in a few of the fields where Ford presently operates, including racer manufacture, and in developing prototype and concept vehicles quickly and with less investment needed.
But for the ordinary customer, it could imply custom rides off the assembly line in the future, with made-to-order parts and visual upgrades that are really special. Commercial 3D printing is appealing due to the fact that it does not require use of the type of moulds developed to form plastic body panel parts like spoilers today. Developing those moulds is so expensive in advance that it would never ever make sense for an automaker to construct them for singe and even small-batch usage, unless the consumer in question wanted to pay far, even more than the cost of your average automobile.
3D printed parts don’t simply have cost benefits– they likewise provide weight savings. Ford approximates that a 3D-printed spoiler could be less than half the weight of the comparable made from a metal casting, for instance, so you can extrapolate that an automobile where much of its external body pieces are 3D-printed might enjoy heavily reduced weight in general, and much better fuel efficiency as a result.
Up until now, Ford’s just testing this technology at its Research and Innovation Center located in Dearborn Michigan, however if all works out it might declare a huge modification in the way the automaker makes cars.
