Re:Porsche found a way to 3D-print lightweight pistons that ...
by DavidPeiffer on Monday July 13, 2020 @11:24PM
(#23828167)
>Factoring a few thousand extra dollars in engine cost is easy.
Totally get your point from the rest of the comment, but we could be seeing notably more expense from this. 2015-2017 I was working in a university research lab and we had an industry partner with a metal printer. They said a piece 10 inches long and 3 inches in diameter had an all-in cost of 5-8k, depending if it was steel or titanium.
I never saw a detailed breakdown of the costs they accounted for, and hope we see these manufacturing costs continue to drop.
There is a lot of challenge making the powder good for 3d printing. Tons of requirements around the size and shape - not being perfectly spherical, not being too long, etc. My understanding is this leads to much of the high material cost.
Totally get your point from the rest of the comment, but we could be seeing notably more expense from this. 2015-2017 I was working in a university research lab and we had an industry partner with a metal printer. They said a piece 10 inches long and 3 inches in diameter had an all-in cost of 5-8k, depending if it was steel or titanium.
I never saw a detailed breakdown of the costs they accounted for, and hope we see these manufacturing costs continue to drop.
There is a lot of challenge making the powder good for 3d printing. Tons of requirements around the size and shape - not being perfectly spherical, not being too long, etc. My understanding is this leads to much of the high material cost.