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Phoenix666 writes:

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".

Original Submission