Hi guys, a good friend of mine sent me the link to this conversation which is very good and maybe I can add some clarity. Patented 3Drsr is closing the gap between 3D Printing & mass manufacturing for hollow structural parts. 3D Rapid Structural Replication allows us to produce parts not possible with injection molding. In the case of the Rodin Wheels, injection molding cannot produce a seamless hollow wheel with hook bead rim, internal ribbing and variable wall thickness where needed to counter stress. 3D Printing can reproduce the wheel in the same complex form but they are not nearly structural enough, took 32 hours each to build on the FDM printer and ended up costing about $3,000 ea. In contrast 3Drsr will produce, under high temp and pressure the otherwise impossible complex fully structural wheel in under 5 mins for less than $200 each during the Kickstarter campaign.
Also it really isn't BS that as the composite material cools it forms and aligns in interlocking chains that make the final cooled part want to hold the solidified state.
As for the tooling time, we are not planning on employing rapid tooling techniques which we would normally do for more reasonable sized parts. Thanks for being interested and talking about 3Drsr Technology and Rodin Wheels.