A few months ago I wrote an article about Hot Wheels’ activities involving 3D printing. These, however, were limited to prototyping and a marketing contest and my conclusion was that it would remain so until there were at least enough home 3D printers installed to sell a sizable chunk of the roughly 100 million toy cars the company sells each year. Until that happens, there is room for small, lean, creative, open source companies like 3D Racers.
Although I would be lying if I said that the project is anything but still in a very early phase of development, the truth of the matter is that what 3D Racers has created is a system with 3D printed RC cars and Arduino based electronic power ups, weapons and fuel/tire consumption throughout the circuit. And it is already a lot of fun to play with. So much so that, although I was running like a madman to see as many stands as I could at Maker Faire Rome, I did spend quite a lot of time trying to get the hang of it. And having a blast doing it.
The team behind 3D Racers is going to release it very soon as an open source project and this might and should get development moving faster as I am fairly certain the open source electronic and 3D printing community will get seriously involved. The way it works is you create the car on a web based tool, selecting from a total of 100.000 combinations of colors and shapes, then download the car parts STL file and 3D print it.
Each car has a sensor that detects the specially designed 3D printed gates, as well as systems to simulate weapons and power ups just like in the popular Mario Kart arcade racing videogame. You can control the car through a 3D pretend remote and, in the future, through and Android/iOS app as well. The on-board electronics will also serve to simulate tire and fuel consumption.
It will take some time before all systems will be ready to go. The race has begun and the finish line has been set. Powered by open source and knowledge sharing, the 3D Racers might even get there ahead of time, and the good news is that the best part is going to be the journey.
