First Car Printed at IMTS

The 30th edition of The International Manufacturing Technology Show 2014 (IMTS; Chicago, IL) was the fourth largest IMTS in history and the largest six-day show ever, with registration of 114,147 representing 112 countries. This was a 13.9 percent increase over IMTS 2012. The event covered more than 1.282 million net sq ft of exhibit space and hosted 2,035 exhibiting companies.

IMTS 2016 will return to McCormick Place in Chicago September 12-17, 2016.

The application of additive manufacturing in a large scale application stole the show. News of the world’s first 3D printed car is still sweeping the nation, from Chicago to Atlanta and from local stations to CNN. The Association For Manufacturing Technology (AMT; Mclean, VA), Local Motors, Oak Ridge National Laboratory, and Cincinnati, Inc., collaborated to 3D print and assemble the first-ever electric car onsite during the six days of the show. On Saturday, September 13, Jay Rogers, the chief executive officer and co-founder of Local Motors, and Douglas Woods, the president of AMT, drove out of the event in the newly finished “Strati.”

Experts believe this direct digital manufacturing technique could revolutionize the industry. The process started with a design competition within the Local Motors community, for which 207 entries were submitted. The winner was Italian Michele Anoe with his ‘Strati’ design, which means ‘layers’ in his native language.

Printing began at the start of the show and only took 44 hours to complete. Made of carbon-fiber reinforced polymer, the same plastic as Lego® products, the car was printed on a large-scale additive printer by Cincinnati. The wheels and hubcaps were also 3D printed using the direct metal process.

The result is an electric car that drives at a top speed of 40 mph and only consists of about 40 parts, versus 20,000 parts in a regular car.