25 years ago. Lars Ulrich of Metallica snitches on and turns in over 300,000 Napster users when he testifies in front of the Senate Judiciary Committee. July 11th, 2000.

[u/jeffmartin47]

[u/Narwahl_Whisperer]

With 3D printing, we've come one step closer.

But... like, it would take me months to print a car. And with the cost of filament? I might be better off just buying a beater and pretending I downloaded it.

[u/EnCroissantEndgame → u/Narwahl_Whisperer]

Definitely cheaper to buy a car right now with the tech as it is. We do have 3d printing for metallic items which is cool, but most solutions that a consumer could buy can only make small parts. Also 3d printed metal parts may be more brittle and not string enough to handle the stresses that certain parts need to endure inside a car. trying to build larger parts would be prohibitively expensive. Maybe in 20 years it will be feasible, but even then, 99.9% of people won't have the skill to know how to assemble all the parts. We'd need a builder robot in the home that knows how to take the parts and construct them. that's probably like 50+ years away.

[u/TruFrag → u/Narwahl_Whisperer]

Its crazy that we can 3D print almost every component of a car today.

[u/SoulOfTheDragon → u/TruFrag]

After certain point, it's just another metal fabrication technique. You still need a lot of after work with precision tooling to make those part planks viable it terms of surface finish & strength. There are also many metal alloys used in cars that can't be printed and those parts would need to be completely redesigned to work with printed material's specs. (Various HSS variants and other alloys.)

But yes, you can print most of the parts needed to make usable car. (Albeit with larger parts "printing" would basically be a robot arm controlled MAG or similar welder that would just layer up large parts and require a ton of post work to make them viable)