
China’s Huge 3D Printers, Soon Able to Print Automobile-Sized Metal Objects - anigbrowl
http://3dprint.com/chinas-huge-3d-printers-soon-able-to-print-automobile-sized-metal-objects/
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kcorbitt
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.

~~~
moocowduckquack
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.

~~~
wlievens
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?

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

[http://reprap.org/wiki/MetalicaRap](http://reprap.org/wiki/MetalicaRap)

[http://medtechinsider.com/archives/24967](http://medtechinsider.com/archives/24967)

[http://www.nthdegreetech.com/printed-
semiconductors.php](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.

~~~
wlievens
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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foldor
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.

~~~
bradyd
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?

~~~
bsder
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.

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stretchwithme
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?

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jotm
Oh, please:
[https://www.google.com/search?client=ubuntu&channel=fs&q=emp...](https://www.google.com/search?client=ubuntu&channel=fs&q=empty+chinese+cities&ie=utf-8&oe=utf-8)

~~~
2stop
oh, please: [http://www.skepticblog.org/2011/02/10/chinas-ghost-
cities/](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.

~~~
seanmcdirmid
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.

~~~
2stop
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.

~~~
seanmcdirmid
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?

~~~
2stop
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...](http://www.gapminder.org/world/#$majorMode=chart$is;shi=t;ly=2003;lb=f;il=t;fs=11;al=30;stl=t;st=t;nsl=t;se=t$wst;tts=C$ts;sp=5.59290322580644;ti=2012$zpv;v=0$inc_x;mmid=XCOORDS;iid=ti;by=ind$inc_y;mmid=YCOORDS;iid=phAwcNAVuyj1jiMAkmq1iMg;by=ind$inc_s;uniValue=8.21;iid=phAwcNAVuyj0XOoBL_n5tAQ;by=ind$inc_c;uniValue=255;gid=CATID0;by=grp$map_x;scale=lin;dataMin=1800;dataMax=2012$map_y;scale=log;dataMin=282;dataMax=119849$map_s;sma=1;smi=1$cd;bd=0$inds=i101_t001800,,,,;i44_t001800,,,,;i239_t001800,,,),

~~~
seanmcdirmid
> 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.

~~~
2stop
> 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'?

~~~
seanmcdirmid
> 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...](http://www.chinadaily.com.cn/business/2012-04/25/content_15137417.htm)

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

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mikevm
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.

~~~
retroafroman
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.

~~~
mikevm
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.

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smoorman1024
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.

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tzakrajs
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?

~~~
cturner

        > 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.

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lowglow
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](http://ideas.techendo.co/ideas/2)

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beauzero
...the future is bright.

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m0dE
you wouldn't...

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

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barkingcat
prelude to the industrial replicator!

