This 3-D Printed Car Wasn’t Printed At All. It Was Drawn.

The Nissan Qashqai (Cash-Kai) is the Nissan Rogue’s European cousin, and according to Nissan themselves, it’s the most popular crossover in Europe, producing an astounding 58 units per hour in the Sunderland, UK plant. To celebrate their launching of the new Qashqai Black Edition, they’ve commissioned a group of artists led by Grace Du Prez, using a 3Doodler Create 3D pen, to make a 3D printed version of the car, which took an astounding total of 800 hours to make!

According to Grace Du Prez:

“I’ve been drawing with 3Doodler’s pens for a few years now, but this is by far and away my most ambitious commission to date. It demonstrates how far 3D printing technology has come and how it can be used by anyone.”

The 3Doodler Create 3D pen is just one of the many ways 3Dd printing can be accomplished. While we typically think of 3D printing method as the Fused Deposition Modeling (FDM) kind (where a plastic filament gets melted and applied to a movable platform layer by layer), the 3D pen allows the user to draw on air. The pen works by heating plastic material up to 230C and forcing it through a 0.7mm wide nozzle. As the heated plastic exits the nozzle the air cools and hardens the plastic.

Koji Nagano, Vice President, Nissan Design Europe, commented:

“At Nissan we always encourage initiatives where design can be expressed through new and innovative technologies. This artistic team have certainly pushed the boundaries of 3D pen technology in creating an impressive sculpture of our premium Qashqai Black Edition”

If you want to snag the real Qashqai Black Edition it will be limited to just 3,360 units across Europe.

(Source: Nissan Europe)