It has been a busy year for Daihatsu. They were fully absorbed into the Toyota family and in June announced that they would be adopting 3D printed parts for their tiny Copen convertible model. When ordering a car from a dealer, the buyer can select from 15 different "skins" for their car. These are panels with patterns built in and available in 10 colours. It sounds more … [Read more...]
3D Printed Vehicles
3D (three dimensional) printing has been around since the early 1980s when boffins figured out how to do it. It became known as additive manufacturing as the process to make a product meant layering the materials to form the final unit. It didn’t really take off for about 20 years as the technology and materials evolved to make the process easier and cheaper to use. Last year I … [Read more...]
Amazon, 3D Printers and a Truck?
Amazon, famous for selling books, CDs and anything else they can think of are really looking to the future of logistics. In March they filed several patents for an on-demand 3D printing service that would see them install a printer on a truck. The idea is to have the truck visit the customer and print the item on their doorstep. Clearly Amazon are looking at the lead time from … [Read more...]