Sunday, July 14, 2019

Colorado father and son 3D printing their own Lamborghini

 
 
a car parked in front of a house: Sterling Backus and his son wanted their own Lamborghini, so they decided to build one at home with 3D printers. Backus wants to use it to teach kids about STEM.© FoxNews.com Sterling Backus and his son wanted their own Lamborghini, so they decided to build one at home with 3D printers. Backus wants to use it to teach kids about STEM.
The LamborghiniAventador costs over $400,000, putting it out of reach for most people. Unless you 3D print one for yourself.
That’s what Sterling Backus of Erie, Colo., is doing, after he and his son, Xander, decided they wanted their own supercar while playing a racing game. They’ve been working on it for over a year, and the sleek black two-door is starting to take a shape that's not a carbon copy of the Aventador, but heavily inspired by it.
Backus is a physicist who works as the Chief Scientific Officer of a local laser firm and is an adjunct professor at Colorado State University. He has been using hobbyist printers that cost just a few hundred dollars each to create dozens of plastic body pieces, which he wraps in carbon fiber for added strength and heat resistance before he attaches them to a spaceframe he designed and constructed out of steel box tubing.
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Colorado father and son 3D printing their own Lamborghini
The car uses a few authentic Lamborghini parts he mostly picked up used, but will be powered by a mid-mounted V8 from a 2003 Corvette that drives the rear wheels through a Porsche 911 transmission.
Backus estimates he's spent around $20,000 so far and said he is hoping to get it registered for the street when it's roadworthy this fall. The project is being chronicled on Facebook and he told Fox 31 that he plans to drive the finished product to schools with his son to teach kids about STEM.
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