Do you have a great idea for a new product but don’t have a fully equipped manufacturing plant to realize it? Thanks to a pair of California hot-rod nuts, the whole manufacturing workflow—from conception to assembly—might someday be within your grasp.
Those hot-rodders are Toy designer Felix Holst and Mouse McCoy. Holst was running the Hot Wheels division of Mattel when he met stunt driver and filmmaker McCoy. Having been on the lookout for the next big change in both their industries, the pair worked on a one-off project and knew they’d found kindred spirits. Their common interest about the future of designing and building was the inspiration for Hack Rod—what Holst and McCoy envision as the manufacturing platform for the maker of tomorrow.
To get Hack Rod off the ground, they engaged a series of partners, including Autodesk, to digitize a hot rod chassis and import it as a 3D model into a computer, where generative design could work its magic. The possibility of generative design using cloud computing’s processing power felt like a revolution for Holst and McCoy: They could set the build parameters, like weight and materials, and let the software produce as many digital variations as it takes to arrive at the optimum model.
After building that optimal chassis, the next step was to put the car, appointed with a high-tech rig of sensors to measure every warp and creak, on the track. That produced an even more accurate 3D model, complete with all the force vectors of real-world driving—data that could be applied to the next build to improve performance even more. After a test run in California’s Mojave Desert, the Hack Rod is on its way to being the world’s first generatively designed, 3D-printed car.
A Vision of Manufacturing’s Future.
But before Holst, McCoy, and their team even put wheels to the road, they knew the Hack Rod vehicle was only the beginning. At present, they’re running a skeleton crew in between shops as they enter a new phase of research and partnership expansion.
In the next phase of Hack Rod, Holst and McCoy are looking to make manufacturing accessible.
“Hack Rod is not a car,” Holst says. “It’s a platform. The platform is connected and does all the work for you.”
The platform itself, McCoy confirms, is going to be built with APIs from Autodesk and other partners, with the aim to provide a one-stop manufacturing portal to create, adjust, and build. As a filmmaker, he’s seen similar things happen in the world of CGI.
“The pipeline in the cloud is really exciting,” he says. “You already have a lot of your design work done just in your ideation, and to be able to take that through in a compressed workflow of manufacturing, that’s the way the world’s heading.”
So once Hack Rod is live, the idea is to upload your 3D model; initiate generative design in the cloud to find the ideal balance of materials, weight, cost, or performance; and then send designs and orders to manufacturers to make parts and send them back to you—all from one single user interface. Right now, McCoy and Holst are putting together the team and the tools to build it all out.
According to Holst, the software end of the manufacturing workflow is getting easier and more accessible all the time, and it’s the next step—finding prices and reputable suppliers that are already tooled up—that’s often out of the hands of everyday makers. “A lot of the time, as an ordinary Joe, you’ve got no idea where to even start with that stuff,” he says.
Of course, there’s another cutting-edge technology adding feasibility to the Hack Rod idea: 3D printing. “Before, we couldn’t have manufactured a generatively designed component because you couldn’t do it using traditional means,” Holst says.
The Hack Philosophy.
The new means of production Holst and McCoy foresee applies to any maker who has a great idea and the proverbial garage or shed to build it—whether it’s a car or any other manufactured product.
“For 100 years, mass production has been set up to build one thing lots of times,” Holst says, noting that the auto industry is set up to make and sell a certain amount of a near-identical commodity because of the steep manufacturing costs. “You can have different wheels or different fabric in the interior, but at the end of the day, it’s the same thing.”
Instead, a system like Hack Rod could introduce mass customization into manufacturing. Traditional production requires tooling production lines for every possible variation, but the one-off nature of Hack Rod would take all that up-front cost away. The workflow needn’t have any more lateral breadth if you’re producing one unit or 1 million.
It’s not clear at this stage how much would be done through additive manufacturing rather than traditionally tooled factories and workshops, but McCoy emphasizes the philosophy of “parts, not things.” “When you get into 3D printing, this is a big deal,” he says. “We’ll be building the pipeline but also showcasing a validated methodology for producing big additive metal parts.”
But manufacturing technology and facilities aren’t the only expensive barriers to entry Hack Rod intends to bring down: Holst believes a great idea shouldn’t need a degree in engineering or industrial design to realize.
“You drag a menu down and choose ‘rally car,’” he explains, “Okay, here’s three suspension setups and engine locations. A few clicks and that geometry’s locked into my design. After that, it’s for me to decide what else I want, and that geometry infinitely adjusts to allow you to fit all your other components.”
The Long View.
But for the Hack Rod platform to succeed means looking far beyond cars and hot rods. Holst and McCoy want to connect powerful design capabilities with appropriate manufacturing partners inside a single portal that’s usable for the average consumer.
Holst can see it starting with enthusiasts rather than commercial operators, but he points out that the enthusiast network is pretty broad and it’s given commercial industries like automotive engineering plenty of innovations.
And w
ith a unique blend of hands-on experience, the drive and passion of wide-eyed newbies, and an eye firmly on the future, they just might make it happen.