1st gear: "Audi's February sales were lifted by a 43 percent jump for the A3 compact"

Oh, they mean the A3 sedan that you cannot actually purchase yet? Pretty easy to inflate the numbers by counting vehicles sent to dealers as pre-sold units.

I drove the A3 at Audi's test drive event in Dallas. This is PRECISELY what they were going after in their little leased suite where they hosted the event (staffed by the most clueless bunch of "promotion specialists")

It could have been much worse.

You agree by saying "no shit they are inferior [to forging or composite]"...I guess you missed the part where I specifically said that additive manufactured parts are as useful as a screen door on a submarine to replace those exact forged or composite parts.

The problem is its just plain sloppy, broken code. The nested replies only show up in line with the OP about half the time. The other half the time the replies end up in line with all replies.

If by "good properties" you mean "equivalent to a machined part of the same material" then yes. But those properties are inferior to a forged part or a tailored composite part. That's what we are getting at.

Randomized fiber in a weak polymer is only marginally better than a "stronger" matrix alone, and still woefully shy of a real tailored/oriented composite part. Many non-structural details in our parts use compression molded randomized fiber + epoxy matrix parts., if only because it would be slightly lighter than the…

Well I was making a rash generalization based upon internet videos like this and the episode of Top Gear where Clarkson drives from London to Milan in a GT500.

Audi is too busy making absolutely terrible commercials about mutant dogs and trying to be cheeky about "luxury abstinence"

Europe: OMG A MUSTANG! TAKE PICTURES! TAKE VIDEO

Subaru did almost the EXACT same ad in reverse, and managed not to make anyone feel like they wanted to kill themselves!

Well that confirms it, they made a 1980's era micro Viper Fiber Placement machine, scaled it down and use a polymer matrix with the fiber. If you want to build any real load bearing structure for items of any real scale, then you need the strength of a serious matrix, not just melted plastic. Thats why we use…

This sounds incredibly dubious, how do you "print" cured epoxy or BMI resin? The curing recipes for laminates are extremely tailored and complex, and the time to cure and dwell to achieve cross-linking cannot be instantaneous (its on the matter of a couple hours with timed ramp rates and controlled exotherm). I would…

Strong =/= efficient. Notice these objects you have mentioned do not need to be terribly lightweight, nor are they loaded in complex ways which would necessarily require tailored structure.

Isotropic parts are absolutely limited by the strength of their constituent homogenous material. The reason we progressed to forgings and composites is because they allow you to locally tailor the structual properties within a single detail, allowing for a much more efficient design within the same volume.

In metallics…

I design rotorcraft rotor systems and blades at one of the large helicopter OEMs. I've worked for both of the largest US helicopter companies in my career.

Unless the tech has the ability to alter the grain structure, there is no way that you can replace a necessarily forged part with a simple isotropic printed/deposited metal. Same reason it cant currently replace composites; they do not insert high strength material into a matrix.

The intricate lightly structural parts…

We have been using CNC composite tape laying machines you are describing since the early 1980s in my industry and at my company. Its not really "3D printing" as is hyped in the media these days as its laying prepreg composite that needs to be tooled, and usually subsequently machined.

Someone call me when you can 3D print non-isotropic structural materials.

I found a picture of the production version!