from the don't-blink-you'll-miss-it dept.
When the Bloodhound Super-Sonic Car is unveiled this week, the public will be able to see the many innovative technologies used in its construction. Several surface panels will be removed so that people can look inside to get a sense of the engineering required to make a car move faster than 1,000mph.
Given the bespoke nature of Bloodhound, a significant number of its components have been fabricated using 3D printing techniques. This includes even the steering wheel.
With over 3,500 custom-made parts, it would have been prohibitively expensive, and wasteful, for the Bloodhound project to use traditional batch production approaches in many instances. The complex design of the car also demands shapes that are difficult - sometimes impossible - to make using traditional tooling. As a consequence, the car's designers were always going to make good use of "additive manufacturing".
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What could become the world's fastest rocket-powered car will be tested for the first time in October:
The Bloodhound supersonic car will run for the first time on 26 October. It is going to conduct a series of "slow speed" trials on the runway at Newquay airport in Cornwall.
Engineers want to shake down the vehicle's systems before heading out to South Africa next year to try to break the land speed record. This stands at 763mph (1,228km/h), and Bloodhound's aim is to raise the mark in two stages - by getting first to 800mph and then to 1,000mph.
The Newquay trials will not see anything like those speeds. The 9,000ft-long (2,744m) runway at the former RAF base is simply too short to allow Bloodhound to use the full thrust at its disposal. Instead, driver Andy Green will take the car up to about 200mph using just its Eurofighter-Typhoon jet engine. The rocket motor that would ordinarily provide additional power will not even be in the car as its development has yet to be completed.
Previously: 3D-Printed Tech to Steer Bloodhound Supersonic Car
Bloodhound supersonic car project axed
A project to race a car at more than 1,000mph has been axed after it failed to secure a £25m cash injection.
The Bloodhound supersonic vehicle - built with a Rolls-Royce Eurofighter jet engine bolted to a rocket - is all but finished.
The Bristol-based team behind it was aiming to beat the existing land speed world record of 763mph (1,228km/h).
[...] The last two-to-three years have been an especially tough environment in which to raise financial support. The investment landscape is difficult, in part because of Brexit uncertainty, but principally because many large brands that might once have put their name on the side of a car to build awareness are now using other marketing tools, such as social media.
Previously: 3D-Printed Tech to Steer Bloodhound Supersonic Car
Bloodhound Supersonic Car to be Tested in October
Bloodhound: Land speed record car is relaunched
The Bloodhound supersonic car is back, under new management and preparing to renew its pursuit of the land speed record.
The project went into administration last year, unable to secure the financing needed to go racing - even though the vehicle was all but built. But with the purchase of the car by entrepreneur Ian Warhurst, Bloodhound has been put on a new footing. Engineers are looking to start high-speed trials "as soon as possible". These could take place in the South African desert later this year, although team-members are being cautious about giving hard timelines for the re-booted venture.
Previously: 3D-Printed Tech to Steer Bloodhound Supersonic Car
Bloodhound Supersonic Car to be Tested in October
Bloodhound Supersonic Car Project Terminated Due to Lack of Funds
(Score: 2) by AnonTechie on Thursday September 24 2015, @07:41PM
It is great that they used 3D printing techniques to fabricate one off parts. Hope they have tested those parts as thoroughly as mass produced parts.
Albert Einstein - "Only two things are infinite, the universe and human stupidity, and I'm not sure about the former."
(Score: 3, Funny) by wonkey_monkey on Thursday September 24 2015, @08:07PM
No need. It only has to work once. Maybe twice.
systemd is Roko's Basilisk
(Score: 1) by Ethanol-fueled on Friday September 25 2015, @03:05AM
Are you talking about the car or the printers themselves?
I was fairly recently introduced to 3-D printing and was horrified by what I actually saw. Over half the printing jobs failed because the printers get gunked-up all the goddamn time, even if you clean them on a regular basis. So you got a big 12-hour job that finishes halfway and then the job fails, and you're back to square one after 6 hours worth of wasted time and filament.
You'll have to resort to tricks like rubbing a glue-stick on your tray to make sure your job doesn't get stuck to the nozzle and slide around, and some printers just freeze up and require a hard-reset to work. Other printers encrypt their data streams so you have to use their buggy and bloated shit software.
Yes, there are people who depend on 3-D printing for prototyping side-jobs, and yes, those jobs frequently fail over and over again causing a loss of not only pay but future work.
None of the different models of 3-D printers have a feed procedure which squirts all the burnt hardened gunk out of the nozzle until it runs clear, so that your job doesn't get fucked up -- if you want to feed, you actually have to go through the whole feed procedure, which means opening the fucking thing up and hand-feeding the filament and even that fails half the time when the mechanism fails to grab the filament.
Yep -- 3-D printing has a looooooong way to go before it's useful in the real-world.
(Score: 3, Funny) by wonkey_monkey on Friday September 25 2015, @07:45AM
You'll have to resort to tricks like rubbing a glue-stick on your tray to make sure your job doesn't get stuck to the nozzle and slide around
Words to live by.
systemd is Roko's Basilisk
(Score: 3, Insightful) by frojack on Thursday September 24 2015, @10:33PM
You also have to question why the steering wheel HAD TO BE that shape.
Other high speed land vehicles were all built by metal workers.
See Images: http://www.darkroastedblend.com/2012/07/land-speed-record-vehicles-part-2-jet.html [darkroastedblend.com]
To suddenly come along and say oh, we couldn't possibly have build this without using 3D printing is disingenuous.
Even citing the current record holder The Thrust SSC [duddha.me], conventionally built with swoopier lines than Bloodhound, they still make these silly claims.
No, you are mistaken. I've always had this sig.
(Score: 2) by davester666 on Friday September 25 2015, @05:54AM
why bother? it only has to work twice.