The big news is that a documentary about the Urbee car (which took filmmaker, Doug Howe, 2.5 years to make) is being premiered tonight in Winnipeg.
I featured the Urbee in a couple of Sept. 28, 2011 postings titled, Manitoba’s Urbee, which described it and mentioned a 3-D printing process used for the car panels, and *an Interview with the Urbee car’s Jim Kor where I asked if nanotechnology enabled some of the refinements such as the 3-D printing process (it did), and more.
Sadly, I’m not getting to Winnipeg tonight but if you can, here’s more information about the premiere,
The public premiere of the URBEE DOCUMENTARY. This is the story of the building of the urban vehicle of the future. URBEE is the world’s greenest passenger car. And it’s being built right here in Winnipeg!
WHEN is this happening?
Tuesday August 28th doors open at 6:00 PM [rush seating]
6:30 Music by Bucky Driedger/Matt Schellenberg of the Liptonians
7:15 URBEE the documentary premiere
WHERE is it?
The Park Theatre 698 Osborne Street
HOW did they do it?
URBEE is designed and constructed by an elite group of Winnipeg engineers, industrial designers and environmental enthusiasts led by Jim Kor
WHY do we need URBEE?
It’s estimated there are 1 billion cars currently on the road across our planet. By 2050 there will be 2.5 billion. The rampant consumption of fossil fuels by these automobiles is an unsustainable drain on the world’s energy. And the resultant dumping of carbon into the atmosphere comes at a grave cost to the environment. Built right here in Manitoba, URBEE is the prototype for a 21st century approach to automotive design that redefines energy efficiency and minimizes impact on the environment.
Here’s an image of the Urbee on the road at Bird’s Hill Park near Winnipeg,
And here’s another angle on the Urbee,
You can see why the car has attracted so much interest here and internationally. Here’s news about the Urbee now that it’s back from Europe (from the Jan. 2012 WOW backgrounder document),
Urbee has just returned from Europe, and is now safely back in our shop on Erin Street. Work continues on the car. This winter [it’s not clear if they mean 2012 or 2013] we plan to drive Urbee during one of our worst Winnipeg snow storms, to demonstrate that Urbee can also be a great winter car!
Congratulations to the filmmaker, Doug Howe, and Jim Kors. I look forward to hearing more about the Urbee (or URBEE).
There will be a DVD of the documentary available soon. If you contact them via jkor@urbee.net, you will be placed on a waiting list.
The industry analysts seem very excited about the newly announced merger between two companies, Stratasys and Objet, that specialize in 3-D printing as Robert Cyran states in his April 16, 2012 posting on the Fast Company website,
Making physical items from digital files is a hot technology – maybe too hot if the market reaction to the acquisition of privately held Objet by Stratasys is any guide. Despite few synergies and an odd poison pill, the buyer’s shares rose nearly 25 percent, mainly on potential revenue synergies. But the future isn’t quite here yet.
You’ll be forgiven if you haven’t previously heard of Stratasys Inc or Objet Ltd. Stratasys, formerly a NASDAQ-traded company from Eden Prairie, MN, has a multi-pronged business selling industrial-quality 3D printers and on-demand object printing services. Objet, of Rehovot, Israel, is a 3D printer manufacturer notable for its “polyjet matrix” technology, that can print an object using multiple different materials.
Here’s why you might care that [they] announced their intention to merge: the new company, Stratasys, Ltd. could become a third major competitor in the consumer 3D printing market.
…
Where might newly-formed Stratasys, Ltd fit in? Neither originating firm is as large as 3D Systems, but both Stratasys Inc. and Objet Ltd. saw revenue increases over 30-percent for 2011, suggesting both companies are healthy. …”
3D Systems hasn’t really established its own name among consumer 3D printers, so it’s not clear that MakerBot really has any large competition yet. If Stratasys Ltd. does enter the consumer market, and if 3D Systems does make a credible entry, consumers will get to chose from at least three major technology originators. If that happens, here’s hoping that means more competition-induced innovation, and less court-bound patent squabbling.
I will add my wishes to Brown’s hope that this move stimulates innovation and not a series of law suits.
Oddly, I had already planned to write about 3-D printing last Friday, April 13, 2012, when I found a news item by Joel L. Shurkin on physorg.com which includes a good description of the 3-D process (Note: I have removed links),
Much of modern manufacturing is by reduction. Manufacturers take blocks of plastic, wood, or metal, and grind and machine away until they get the item they want. All the plastic, wood, or metal that doesn’t make it into the item is thrown away, maybe as much as 90 percent wasted.
3-D printing puts down layers of metal powders or plastics as directed by software, just as ink is laid down on paper directed by printer drivers. After each layer is completed, the tray holding the item is lowered a fraction of a millimeter and the next layer is added. Printing continues until the piece is complete.
Molten metal is allowed to cool and harden; plastics or metal powders are hardened by heat or ultraviolet light. The ingredients aren’t limited to those substances; almost anything that flows can be accommodated, even chocolate.
There is little waste, and it is possible to change the object by simply working with the software that drives the printer the way text is changed in a word processor.
In addition to the advantages there are also some disadvantages to the technology,
“Printing a few thousand iPhones on demand (and with instant updates or different versions for each phone) at a local facility that can manufacture many other products may be far more cost-effective than manufacturing ten million identical iPhones in China and shipping them to 180 countries around the world,” the Atlantic Council wrote in a report.
Clearly, not everyone would share the advantages. Manufacturing centers like China could lose millions of jobs in that sector, and their economies could be destabilized. The industries that transport the supply line and distribute the finished product would also be hit, the council wrote. Warehouses full of parts and products could be replaced by machines that print on demand.
Closer to home, I mentioned Stratasys and 3-D printing in a Sept. 28, 2011 posting about Manitoba’s Urbee car. My most recent mention of 3-D printing was in an April 10, 2012 posting about print-on-demand robots.
In an earlier posting today, (Manitoba’s Urbee) about the Urbee, I promised an interview with Jim Kor, project leader and lead designer. Befoe getting to the interview, here’s a little biographical information from the Urbee website’s Team page,
Jim Kor is a professional engineer (mechanical) with over 35 years of experience in designing automotive, bus, rail, agricultural, and heavy mobile equipment as well as civil structures and product for the aerospace and medical industries. He is the senior designer and project leader for the Urbee project. Jim is the owner of Kor Product Design, a 30 year old international consulting firm.
Congratulations on your achievement, i.e., getting your first prototype completed. Could you describe the 3D printing process in simple terms? (e.g. do you lay down layers of atoms? particles? bits of polymer?; what does a 3D printer look like compared to the printers most of us are accustomed to?; etc.)
The 3-D printing process is an additive process, where a ‘3-D printer’ precisely places a material (such as plastic), thin strands or particles at a time, layer by layer, with each layer bonding to the next, all under computer control, until a rigid part emerges. These 3-D printers look like large metal boxes, and can be the size of bar-fridges (desktop models) or walk-in freezers (floor-mounted models). The input to the machine is strands of material (wound in loops, like wire), and the output is finished parts.
Has this 3D printing process been enabled by nanotechnology?
Yes, I believe so. The head, where the material emerges hot and bonds to the lower layer, is where all the action takes place, and most of the technology is focussed.
Is every single element (tires, windows, seats, panels, etcl) of this car produced by 3D printing?
On our first prototype Urbee, just the body panels are 3-D printed. All the windows were also 3-D printed, but these 3-D printed parts were used as patterns for making the plastic and glass windows within Urbee.
How long does it take to print a piece?
The larger pieces currently can take a long time, or at least they did on our first prototype. But, we are learning, and this machine time will come down, especially with further progress regarding the printing of larger panels.
I gather you’re raising funds for your 2nd prototype. Is that one going to be identical to the first or are you refining the design and how?
The second prototype will greatly benefit from the first prototype (the first time we have seen all major components working within the car). We plan on refining and expanding our use of 3-D printing, taking it into the interior and parts of the chassis. How close is your product to being commercialized and what would it take to get it commercialized?
We are at first prototype stage. Most optimistic production date would be 2014. It will take continued Research & Development by our Team to get us there.
Could you tell me a little bit about how this project came to be located in Manitoba?
The originators of the project, and most of the Urbee Team lives and works (as designers and engineers) in Winnipeg, Manitoba, Canada.
Have you gotten provincial and federal support for this project? And, if any, what kind? Have you also gotten support from venture capitalists, banks, etc.?
We have gratefully received financial assistance, but the project remains largely self-funded. Without financial assistance (especially donations), and without the expertise and in-kind support of our sponsors (as listed on our website), the project could not have advanced to the point it has. We continue to receive fantastic support from some of the best people, within some of the best companies and organizations in the world. Hats off to them for making this project what it is today.
On a completely different note, Urbee sounds like Herbie, the name of a Volkswagen beetle featured in a number of Disney movies. Was this intentional?
No, it was not intentional. URBEE stands for URBan Electric with Ethanol as back-up. It is a project name that has stuck, is rather unique (easy to do google searches), and which I personally have grown to like. I don’t mind being associated with the original VW Beetle, one of the best-selling cars in the world, … ever, …. (over 24 million units sold worldwide, I believe).
Why did you choose that particular colour for your prototype?
The Industrial Designers within the Team chose the colour. They are extremely talented (the best in the world, in my opinion). They have designed the body to not only look aesthetically pleasing and ‘correct’, but have achieved a Coefficient of Drag (Cd) of 0.15, … extremely low for a practical car. Some would say impossibly low, but two independent computer aerodynamic simulations have verified this number, so we are satisfied that we are there. It is what makes us claim that ‘One day all cars will look like this’, because this body shape honours the physics of the problem (a car body moving at the bottom of an ocean of air).
Is there anything you’d like to add?
Yes. Thanks to all those that have helped advance this groundbreaking and important project. Thanks for your interest in this project, that is helping propel it forward. And keep your eye on our website (www.urbee.net), to see where we’re going next.
Thank you and I wish you and your team the best of luck, Jim Kor.
Here’s one more look at the Urbee,
Urbee rear side at TEDxWinnipeg Sept. 15,2011
ETA Sept. 28,2011 11:50 am PST: I’ve corrected a few grammatical and spelling errors of my own. I am including two videos featuring the Urbee. The first is promotional video produced by the Urbee team,
This second video is a clip from a television programme interview of Jim Kor and Jeff Hanson discussing the 3D printing process and the Urbee,
Manitoba's Urbee and its engineering team at TEDxWinnipeg Sept. 15, 2011 event
There’s a brand new car (prototype) in town. It was unveiled at TEDx Winnipeg on Sept. 15, 2011 by Manitoba-based company. From the Urbee website,
Urbee is a two-passenger hybrid car designed to be incredibly fuel efficient, easy to repair, safe to drive, and inexpensive to own.
Shortly after the TED presentation, the Urbee was featured in a Sept. 20, 2011 article by Ariel Schwartz for Fast Company and in a Sept. 21, 2011 news item for BBC News. From the Schwartz article,
Last year, Stratasys and Kor Ecologic teamed up to develop the first 3-D printed car–a vehicle that has its entire body 3-D printed layer by layer until a finished product emerges. The Urbee was just a partially completed prototype when we first wrote about it last year. …
The [finished] prototype, unveiled a few days ago at the TEDx Winnipeg event, is a two-passenger, single-cylinder, eight-horsepower vehicle. That means it has significantly less power than today’s vehicles, which usually have at least 68 horsepower. But those missing horses don’t matter: the Urbee requires just an eighth of the energy of conventional cars. The electric-ethanol hybrid is also designed to get up to 200 mpg on the highway and 100 mpg in city conditions–and it lasts up to 30 years.
There are more details about the printing process and its contribution to the car’s ‘greeness’ in the BBC article,
The use of “additive manufacturing”, where layers of material are built up, or “printed” to form a solid objects, contributed to the car’s green credentials, according to project leader Jim Kor.
“One only puts material where one needs it,” explained Mr Kor, who unveiled his vehicle at the TEDxWinnipeg conference.
“It is an additive process, building the part essentially one ‘molecule’ of material at a time, ultimately with no waste.
“This process can do many materials, and our goal would be to use fully-recycled materials.”
Currently it is only the Urbee’s body panels that are printed – by Minneapolis-based Stratasys. However, Mr Kor said he hoped that other parts would be produced this way in future.
Jim Kor, project leader and lead designer, very kindly answered some questions for an interview about the Urbee, which I will be posting later today.
