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Yes, that is right. The 2020 Ford Shelby GT500 will have 3D printed parts! The most expected muscle car of the decade will be partially 3D printed. Well, partially is a slightly too strong word here. It will get two 3D printed parts. However, this made me think about the 3D printing Ford has been screaming about for the last couple of years. It may very well be the biggest change in the world of mass production in ages.
On December 1st, 1913, Henry Ford started the first moving assembly line for the mass production of a car. History.com reports that “his innovation reduced the time it took to build a car from more than 12 hours to two hours and 30 minutes.”
Jump to today, and astounding news has emerged – “The 2020 Ford Mustang Shelby GT500 Have 3D Printed Parts Brakes?”
I wonder, could this innovation be as industry shattering as the first production line was all that time ago? Of course, I am not the only one who thought about this.
“More than 100 years ago, Ford created the moving assembly line, forever changing how vehicles would be mass-produced,” Joe Hinrichs, Ford’s President of Global Operations, said in a statement. “Today, we are reinventing tomorrow’s assembly line — tapping technologies once only dreamed of on the big screen — to increase our manufacturing efficiency and quality.”
Ford is one of the hundreds (if not thousands) of companies that are working on perfecting the 3D printing process. It has been doing it from the very start (all the way back in the Eighties), but since sometime in early 2000s, it integrated the 3D printing process into its production affairs. The result is a disturbing fact – if by some magic, 3D printing at Ford stopped, the company would not be able to produce cars.
At all.
“We touch a significant portion of the vehicle with 3D printing now,” said Harold Sears, Technical Expert of rapid manufacturing technologies with Ford’s manufacturing division. “We’re prototyping virtually everything [using 3D printing] from the road to roof.”
So, what the hell does all of this have with the Shelby GT500?
These are some facts you have to know:
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