The idea of cars and trucks being built while snaking along junction lines could look like that in 2024, as automakers, suppliers, and a host of cutting-edge tech corporations find new tactics to send vehicle production into the third dimension.
The use and progression of 3D printing, also known as additive manufacturing, is accelerating as the challenge of cost-effectively generating lighter, safer, and more imaginative cars becomes more pressing.
The global automotive additive production market is expected to reach $11. 26 billion by 2030, up from $2. 05 billion in 2022, according to a report by research firm Skyquestt.
For years, automakers have pursued 3D printing to speed up prototyping, redesigning selected parts and replacing certain components.
But the industry has now moved beyond additive production for prototypes and is now generating low-volume 3D-printed traditional trim parts in some existing cars and is looking to expand their use, according to Robert Willig, chief executive of CEOArray SME, formerly the Society. Engineers.
“As the automotive industry moves toward lighter hybrid or even electrified vehicle platforms, additive production plays a very important role because it allows for effective tactics to create effective designs,” Willig explained in an interview. “Since you may have wanted 3 portions before, you can optimize the design, create one and make it more effective, and put the curtains where you want them to be lighter, more powerful, and more flexible. “
The next step in 3D printing was on display at the annual RAPID+TCT additive manufacturing trade show in Los Angeles last June, hosted by SME, which highlighted new processes and fabrics ranging from plastics to composites and metals.
“One example is the progression of complex materials from lightweight, high-strength parts,” Dallas Martin, additive manufacturing engineer at Toyota Motor North America, said in an email interview. “These parts have shown notable innovations in vehicle functionality metrics, such as durability. ” and fuel power. Additionally, our integration of 3D printing into tooling and jig production has improved the power and flexibility of the production line.
Martin said he is excited about Toyota’s adoption of Stratasys’ selective absorption fusion or powder bed technology, which he said presents significant opportunities for high-volume production with high degrees of reliability and repeatability in production. manufacturing of complex components on a large scale.
No, it is no longer just about portions made of plastic or composites. Nikon SLM Solutions has developed a procedure to 3D print portions of steel, known as an electric bed laser fusion procedure.
Active Heat Shield for a Bugatti 3-D published a procedure developed by Nikon SLM.
Once a design is created, it is cut into thousands of layers using software and sent to the 3D printer.
“The lasers will then create layer after layer by necessarily welding them together, so that we have a layer of dust that goes down until we get it. By the way, you get the smallest details, a higher density of the material. “explained Charlie Grace, sales director of Nikon SLM, in an interview.
Grace says Nikon’s SLM procedure, once used primarily for prototyping, now makes it possible to create powertrain, frame and chassis components, as well as tooling.
It is used through Divergent Technologies to produce parts designed through its Divergent Adaptive Production System, or DAPS, described in an interview with co-founder and COO Luke Czinger as an “automated design software” that consumers can automatically design, additively manufacture, and join. . Complex structures for automotive, aerospace, and defense applications.
Divergent is lately working with six automakers, adding Mercedes-Benz, Aston Martin, Bugatti and McLaren, 3D printing the most common suspension and booster components, according to Czinger.
“We actually started with the logos that were the highest priced and also had low volume, so we can help from the beginning with less scale,” Czinger said. The McLarens, the Aston Martins, we can be successful there by saving 20%, 30% en masse, turning them into many sets or thousands of sets into single digits, but each one of them then grows into a bigger logo within that umbrella Therefore, Bugatti adopts the VW organization and in five, six or seven years we hope to produce cars with thousands of units each year with the same technology.
The Czinger Vehicles 21C hybrid hypercar created through the adaptive production system diverges from components published basically in 3-D.
The company’s generation is “powertrain agnostic” according to Czinger, but Divergent is very focused on using the attributes of 3D-printed materials for EV functionality, working with various corporations and spawning a hybrid-electric hypercar through its sister company Czinger. . Vehicles.
“The story of electric cars is compelling in terms of diversity. If you can save 20 to 30 percent of mass in your chassis structure, you can increase the diversity or reduce the length of the package,” said Czinger. “Overall, for lower-cost electric cars, that’s really significant for the profitability of that company. Then there is also the sustainability factor. If you’re making a lighter vehicle, use fewer tires, but also use less aluminum and less CO2. in the production process.
“When corporations were doing bottom-up design paintings and designing anything from scratch and giving engineers the flexibility of design freedom, what we’re seeing is that parts like the powertrain organizing brackets can be successfully designed so that it is not necessary to join them. No more nuts and bolts need to be assembled, which of course increases the lightness of the material,” added Nikon SLM’s Grace.
SME’s Willig points out that 3D printing is not yet complex enough for the production of heavily forged parts, such as axles, axles and heavy gears, but that does not mean that this generation will not evolve enough in the long term to achieve this. happen.
While 3D printers are generating an ever-increasing number of car parts, Willing is rarely too convinced that they’re going to completely upgrade the classic meeting lineup, predicting, “I can’t believe a gigantic factory without printers yet and I believe it the way we do it. Reprint anything here that will then pass here to be machined, and then it will be assembled here and that’s a wonderful opportunity.
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