MT Magazine March/April 2024

FEATURE STORY

THE ADDITIVE ISSUE

14

The official poster for the Strati, the world’s first 3D printed car, which was created at IMTS 2014. (Image courtesy of Rick Neff)

It was the day before IMTS 2014 officially started. Forklifts zoomed around the floor. Carpet was still being laid. Workers hurried to get exhibits in place. It was also media day, when journalists from around the world got to walk the floor – albeit a floor that was still taking shape – and, if they took AMT up on its invitation, they had the opportunity to see something that had never happened before – not just at IMTS but at any trade show or event, anywhere: A car was being printed in the AMT ETC at McCormick Place. Bonnie Gurney, AMT vice president, strategic content and partnerships now; AMT director of communications then: “We were absolutely confident, or maybe 95%, it was going to happen.” Jay Rogers, CEO of Haddy Inc. now; co-founder and CEO of Local Motors then: “It was like a moon shot. And until you land on the moon, you haven’t done it.” Rick Neff, CEO of Rick Neff LLC now; manager of market development for Cincinnati Inc. then: “That Sunday morning, when we started the machine, no one could look you in the eye and say that it would work.” But when all was said and done, the team accomplished what had previously been unthinkable: They built the first 3D printed car in the world, the Strati. The Strati was a remarkable success, even going on to appear on the “Today Show.” It has since helped drive the entire additive industry to where it is today. Not Bits and Pieces. The Whole Thing. In 2005, Rogers visited Craig Bramscher, who had started Brammo, a vehicle manufacturing company in Ashland,

Oregon. That’s when Rogers began to understand that a car could be 3D printed. Rogers says Bramscher showed him the printing of a vehicle-like structure with a urethane paste that came out looking like a marshmallow. It set for about an hour, then a spinning blade was used to cut away material so that it looked like a car. Rogers says he began querying an array of composite companies about whether they had a material that could be extruded, quickly set, and then machined. In 2007, after a couple years without gaining any traction, he pretty much gave up and put the thought on hold. That same year, Rogers founded Local Motors, a company that took a revolutionary approach to the design (leveraging crowdsourcing) and building (at microfactories) of vehicles. And the idea of printing a car stayed with him. It’s important to note that when Rogers uses the phrase “printing a car,” he means essentially the whole thing, structure and chassis, not individual sections that are subsequently assembled into a vehicle. Where It Began As Lonnie Love, the then-corporate fellow at the Manufacturing Demonstration Facility at Oak Ridge National Laboratory (ORNL) and the current national security programs fellow at Sandia National Laboratories, recalls: In 2013, he and his colleagues worked on what was to become known as the Big Area Additive Manufacturing (BAAM) machine, based on work that had been done at Lockheed Martin by Slade Gardner and his colleagues. The intent of the Lockheed Martin machine was to print aerospace tooling. “They decided not to invest in the technology and asked us