Sustainable Digital Prototyping
Before
Urbee’s physical prototype was additively built, KOR EcoLogic deployed Autodesk (autodesk.com) software to digitally create it. Engineers used Inventor to design a 3D prototype of the vehicle and test different body designs. More than 80% of a product’s environmental impact can be determined during the design phase, making this an important step in establishing KOR EcoLogic’s goal of across-the-board sustainability. “Other hybrids on the road today were developed by applying green standards to traditional vehicle formats,” says Jim Kor, KOR EcoLogic president and chief technology officer. “Urbee was designed with environmentally sustainable principles dictating every step of its design.”
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.”
