Ilvolo: An Exploding, 3D Printed RC Car from Devin Montes

This is the sort of project that consumer printing and design was made for: a 3D printed RC car that explodes using elastic, springs, and projectiles, which are tripped during a head-on collision.

The man behind this explosive piece of engineering, Devin Montes, a product design student at the Art Center College of Design, took an existing RC car and then set his mind to the task of completely re-imagining the vehicle from the ground up.

He began by tearing down the car to its component parts and making a series of paper sketches to arrive at a pleasing design for the outer panels. Next up, he built a “test launcher” which uses small rubber bands. The launcher was a proof of concept to assure that the proper mayhem would result following a collision.

A group of mockup body panels in paper then led to the design for the body panels which would fit into the launching mechanisms, and he then transferred his initial concept into Solidworks to make sure the parts ultimately worked together efficiently.

Montes calls the result “Ilvolo,” and it’s “a speedy, spinning, spark shooting monster of an RC car built to break apart when it crashes and reassemble for repeated recklessness.”

“I run a single MakerBot Replicator 2,” Montes says. “I’ve managed up to 50 microns, but I typically don’t go below .15 mm and everything runs smoothly. I’ve run it for about 300 hours and I still can’t get enough, so I’d be happy to print your parts.”

The designer runs a printing service, The D’s 3D Printing, and you can reach him through Facebook.

He also won the Bravo TV Launch Your Line Competition in 2009, and Dean and Dan Caten of the fashion label Dsquared selected one of his T-shirt designs to be sold in the Bravo TV store. He also took down the prize in last year’s Type A Machines Valentine’s Day design contest for his 3D printed Love Bird Water Whistle project.

“I thrive on creative expression, whether it’s playing and producing music, film, photography or illustration,” Montes says. “I also enjoy adrenaline and the great outdoors.”

He says he’s a 3D printing guru, fluent with Photoshop, Illustrator, Solidworks, Adobe Premiere and Flash, and he’s also proficient with Rhino, Sketchup, After Effects, and HTML. And oh year, he’s conversant in Spanish and German.

As for Ilvolo, you can find all the details of the project here, and it includes some very cool comic-book inspired illustrations.

What do you think of Ilvolo, an RC car which was re-designed to explode on impact? Let us know in the Exploding 3D Printed RC Car forum thread on 3DPB.com. Check out a video of the breakaway car in action, as well as more photos and design work, below.