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

Re:China’s Huge 3D Printers, Soon Able to Print Automobile-S... by wlievens on Friday February 07, 2014 @07:06PM (#7199641)

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?

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Re:China’s Huge 3D Printers, Soon Able to Print Automobile-S... by moocowduckquack on Sunday February 09, 2014 @10:59AM (#7205860)

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.

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Re:China’s Huge 3D Printers, Soon Able to Print Automobile-S... by wlievens on Sunday February 09, 2014 @04:14PM (#7207270)

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.

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Re:China’s Huge 3D Printers, Soon Able to Print Automobile-S... by mitochondrion on Friday February 07, 2014 @11:50PM (#7200312)

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

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Re:China’s Huge 3D Printers, Soon Able to Print Automobile-S... by stretchwithme on Saturday February 08, 2014 @12:09AM (#7200348)

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

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Re:China’s Huge 3D Printers, Soon Able to Print Automobile-S... by adamnemecek on Friday February 07, 2014 @07:26PM (#7199729)

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

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