Come across this little snippet - “Using a steel frame definitely helps, especially now with 3-D printing. Before you had to source the tubing with the correct wall thickness. Now we can print whatever you want, which makes things even better for us.” from
Makes me wonder whether it could be used in a karting application?
Gotta imagine the big manufacturers are looking into this. Variable thickness tubing, exotic shapes, creative reinforcements printed directly into the tube. Lots of cool possibilities to test.
Nerd in me is mad excited.
Karting enthusiast is not as excited… because of what TJ pointed out above.
Although for closed-end tubes you could already insert stiffening bars as the frame was constructed. Printing just gives you more options.
I could see them using it to prototype, but once in production they would go to some other method. 3D printing is really slow for any production quantities. Even karting quantities. I am not sure it is energy cost effective either.
We have a 3D printer at work. Once we get past prototype we have a tool made and mold the parts. We never go in to production, even low volume, with 3d printed parts.
In agreement with Todd. 3d printing works great for prototyping and one offs but doesn’t lend itself to production very much.
That doesn’t mean some kart company won’t try it for their race team, but they’d also have to increase their understand of FEM modelling too. I still get the impression most or all karts a designed from experience rather then first principles modelling.