3D Printing Meets Vehicle Prototyping

Meet “Urbee,” a three-wheel, two-seat, next-generation hybrid vehicle being developed by engineers at Winnipeg-based KOR EcoLogic (urbee.net). Designed to run on renewable energy and ethanol, it’s capable of achieving up to 200 mpg highway.

To create the Urbee prototype KOR EcoLogic engineers used fused deposition modeling (FDM) technology from Stratasys (stratasys.com) to additively build the vehicle body instead of building patterns. Using Dimension 3D printers (dimensionprinting.com) and Fortus 3D production systems (fortus.com), a full-scale ABS plastic prototype of Urbee was printed and assembled within days. “It’s a really nice process for getting a fast prototype completed,” says Blaine McFarlane, KOR EcoLogic Senior Engineer. “It’s a lot simpler than doing all the handwork and building patterns.” And it is a whole lot faster, as he estimates the other approach would require nearly a year.

What’s more, traditional pattern-making doesn’t facilitate design modifications, which isn’t helpful in the prototype phase, when changes in order to do things like eliminate drag and minimize both rolling resistance and weight are necessary.  “Once you spend all that time and money on tooling, you really kind of lock yourself in and you make a lot of sacrifices, rather than change the design,” McFarlane says. With 3D printing, he says “if you want to make a change, you can print a new part with the changes incorporated, instead of having to make a new tool.”