Towards the *fully* 3D-printed electric cars.

wrote:
In sci.physics Jeff Findley wrote:
In article ,
says...
Landing gear, and all other structural moving parts, is surely another
area on aircraft which could use this technology. Landing gear make up
a significant percentage of an aircraft's total dry mass, so this would
be a likely candidate for shape optimization and 3D printing.

Again, you are talking about niche applications and landing gear are not
that big a part of an aircrafts weight.

From Wikipedia (because I don't have time to look up a "better" source):

The undercarriage is typically 4-5% of the takeoff mass and can
even reach 7%.

That's significant in aerospace.

Have you ever looked at the interior structures of an aircraft?

Yes, many times. I've got a b.s. in aerospace engineering, so I know
the basics. Many of our customers are aerospace, so I have to
understand the domain.

3D printing is, and always will be, a niche manufacturing method.

Handy at times, but certainly not a world changer.

This is quite short sighted. I'm sure the same was said about
composites when they were in their infancy. Today it would be quite
hard (i.e. likely impossible) to point to something commercial that
flies and carries people commercially that has absolutely zero composite
content.

An irrelevant red herring to the subject of 3D printing. There are a HUGE
number of different composite materials out there and it has taken well
over half a century for most aircraft to have even a small fraction of
composite materials in their construction.

Note the word "most".

How is an example of the adoption of new materials/manufacturing
processes not applicable to 3D printing which is another example of the
same thing? Are you deliberately being intellectually dishonest?

Well, if you want to compare composite materials and 3D printing, composite
materials have been around for over a half century and the usage is still
trivial compared to traditional materials in just about all products other
than camper shells and ski boats.

So we can expect 3D printers to still be niche in 50 years.

Not really, 3D printing is capable of exponential growth once it reaches a
certain capability, composites aren't, and the parts we won't be fabricating for
a while, processors and storage, are subject to Moore's law.