3D printing builds concept cars' interior

Ever wonder how designers create conceptual interiors jam-packed with radical curves and insane shapes that meld modern art with a traditional cockpit? The interiors start life as sketch, get rendered in CAD and then are brought into the real world through a printer – a very larger, very complex and incredibly expensive printer.

3D printing has established itself as a crucial element in the designs of both conceptual and production vehicles. Scientifically known as stereolithography, 3D printing, like many things, is built from the bottom up. A laser cuts slices into harden liquid resin, layering each slice atop one another to form a three-dimensional object.

An industry leading company that specializes in 3D printing, i.materialise, brought along parts of an interior based on the Citroën Hypnos, a car featured in the game Gran Turismo 5, to the 2008 Paris Motor Show. They finished the resin-made Citroën interior with touches of copper, nickel and other materials, and Wired sat down with the designers to understand how this radical concept goes from a sketch to reality. It's worth the read and you can check it out in the source link below.