In the replies to my comment, there are a few of "what ifs" about the usefulness of 3d printed parts. All such questions can be answered with the following:
If 3d printing produced useful parts, it would be absolutely ubiquitous in motorsport. In reality, it's of no real interest.
Formula 1 teams add new parts to their car at almost every race, iterating as fast as their wind tunnel and computer models will produce data. It's commonplace for an engineer to arrive at a racetrack hours before a race starts, carrying a brand new part. They almost exactly match the ideal use-case for 3d printing - they produce lots of one-off parts, where speed of iteration is vital and money is no object. In reality, most F1 teams use entirely conventional manufacturing processes, even for non-structural components like wind tunnel models.
3d printing is extremely useful in a small number of applications (mainly mold-making) but it's not new and it's not revolutionary. Most manufacturing processes are dipshit-simple, even if you're producing something very complex. Just as in programming, we combine lots of simple processes into a sophisticated whole.
If 3d printing produced useful parts, it would be absolutely ubiquitous in motorsport. In reality, it's of no real interest.
Formula 1 teams add new parts to their car at almost every race, iterating as fast as their wind tunnel and computer models will produce data. It's commonplace for an engineer to arrive at a racetrack hours before a race starts, carrying a brand new part. They almost exactly match the ideal use-case for 3d printing - they produce lots of one-off parts, where speed of iteration is vital and money is no object. In reality, most F1 teams use entirely conventional manufacturing processes, even for non-structural components like wind tunnel models.
3d printing is extremely useful in a small number of applications (mainly mold-making) but it's not new and it's not revolutionary. Most manufacturing processes are dipshit-simple, even if you're producing something very complex. Just as in programming, we combine lots of simple processes into a sophisticated whole.