How is 3D printing used in the automotive industry

The 3D printing technology has given rise to spectacular achievements in the automotive industry, starting from the possibility of fast prototyping, through a more and more widespread production of final car parts, and ending with 3D manufacturing of nearly the whole cars.

Design and concept of communication
High detail, smooth and accurate 3D printed scale models are very often used in the automotive industry to demonstrate designs and concepts of new vehicles. The reason is simple – using CAD models alone is not effective enough to define possible design problems. Such models are also used for the aerodynamic testing of new models.

Prototyping validation
Like in many other industries, prototyping is a very important part of the manufacturing process in the automotive sector. 3D printing allows for rapid prototyping in the pre-manufacturing stage. Using AM now is one of the most popular ways to validate a prototype – from a small quickly printed detail to a high detail full-scale part suitable for performance validation and testing.

Preproduction sampling and tooling
The specialists of 3D hubs regard this application as the most promising. 3D printing can be used to make molds and thermoforming tools, rapid manufacturing of grips, jigs, and fixtures. This allows automakers to produce samples and tools at low costs and to eliminate future losses in production when investing in high-cost tooling.

Customized parts
Additive manufacturing is used by automotive enterprises to tailor the parts to specific vehicles (making them custom and lightweight) or even drivers (e.g. seats for racing cars). This is especially useful when the cost of such unique components is justified by a substantial improvement in vehicle performance.

Examples of using 3D printers in automotive

Ford Motor Company

Did you know that Ford bought the third 3D printer ever made?
It was back in 1988, but a lot of progress has been made since then.
Ford had invested $45 million in its Advanced Manufacturing Center, dedicated for developing digital transformation and incorporating 3D printing and other industry 4.0 technologies to their production lines.

Earlier this year, Ford Performance, which is the high performance division at Ford Motor Company, has printed what claimed to be the largest 3D printed metal automotive part in history. The aluminum manifold inlet is a complex web‑like structure that was impossible manufacture using traditional methods. It took five days to print the manifold, that was later installed in a 1977 Ford F-150 Hoonitruck owned by the popular rally driver Ken Block.

BMW

BMW is one of the early adopters of additive manufacturing, that has been experimenting with the technology for several years. Since 2010 it had already exceeded the one million 3D printed parts mark. As for mass production, BMW is aiming for production of 50,000 components per year and 10,000 individual spare parts.

BMW has shown several success stories in implementing printed metal parts to their vehicles. For example, BMW chose to utilize 3D printing in the manufacturing of two parts of its i8 Roadster. One is the convertible’s roof bracket which has a unique complex shape that is very hard to produce using traditional methods. The second is its window guide rail that is produced in a capacity of approximately 100 units a day.

Another application of additive manufacturing technology can be found in the brakes of the new BMW M850i Coupe Night Sky Edition. BMW used metal 3D printer to print the entire brake caliper, holding on to the elegant design concept and even visible branding on the part.

WKproto is a professional rapid prototyping and low-volume production manufacture specializing in 3D printing, CNC machining, and Vacuum Casting. Our factory and parter factories enable rapid prototyping of designs from our customers and low volume production for market verification.

We have three factories. 3D printing factory meets the demands of most 3D printing services with 100 SLA machines, 10 SLS machines, 10 MJF machines, 10 SLM machines, and 20 FDM machines. CNC machining factories for processing metals, plastic and more materials with more than 200 machines for CNC milling/CNC lathes/EDM / Wire EDM and the Vacuum Casting factory is for low volume production for ABS、PC、PP、PE、PA、POM、PMMA、PVC.