Hasta La Ideas

These videos are about twice as long as they need to be in terms of conveying the relevant data, but these looks inside General Motors’ Rapid Prototyping Labs are worth a gander. Anyone who’s worked in an ID firm where you had to e-mail the CADs out to the modelshop and sit on your hands for two days can’t help but feel envious at seeing their onsite stereolithography and selective laser sintering machines.

The editors have blurred out some of what’s on the designers’ monitors and some of the larger physical parts, as GM has apparently worked out a proprietary method for joining RP parts together, like when they need to produce something too big for the machine and have to bang it out in sections. Still, you at least get a good look at the process:

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