The Truth Behind Bond’s Aston Martin’s DB5 

Models, training bikes, engines-you can make pretty much anything with 3D printing. But few people know that even the Aston Martin DB5 used in the 23rd James Bond film, “Skyfall", came out of the printer. And Evonik polymers are what made it possible.

he final scenes of the film, injured and worse for the wear, James Bond takes refuge in the Scottish highlands. There, he entrenches himself (along with M, the head of the Secret Intelligence Service) in an old manor house and waits for his adversary to attack. The villain approaches with a helicopter, bombs the estate, and, in the process, destroys Bond's silver Aston Martin. One of 007's cars was auctioned off for roughly $2 million in 2006-doesn't it hurt to just blow up an expensive car like that for a movie? "Don't worry," grins Tobias Reinold, the systems director at voxeljet, one of the leading providers of industrial 3D printing technology. "No Aston Martins were harmed to make this film. We made three models of the car in Friedberg in Bavaria (Germany)-we printed them, to be precise." Printing a car? How does that work? The answer is simple: with the powder-binder jetting process, a form of 3D printing. Assembly and the painstaking detail work on the model cars were done later at Propshop at Pinewood Studios in the UK.