Wen the primary stereolithography (SLA) machine from 3D Techniques arrived at Stewart-Haas Racing’s North Carolina facility six years in the past, Manufacturing Supervisor Reneau Van Landingham held his breath. Would it not be capable of run all through the weekend? Would it not be quick sufficient to ship dozens of components by the next week?
Shortly, Van Landingham tells TCT, it grew to become fairly regular that the reply was, sure.
“Wednesday night time, we’d ship components to the tunnel, able to be examined at six within the morning the subsequent day, simply in time,” Van Landingham shares. “Generally we’d carry components off the printer on to the wind tunnel.”
The NASCAR crew is co-owned by three-time NASCAR Cup Sequence champion Tony Stewart and Gene Haas, founding father of Haas Automation, North America’s largest machine software maker. Final yr, the crew entered a three-year technical partnership with 3D Techniques to deploy additive manufacturing applied sciences to additional improve the pace of its racecars, and at RAPID + TCT 2024 in Los Angeles, the 2 have come collectively to inform the story.
As Van Landingham places it: “We would like our vehicles to go quick with the most effective know-how that is out there.”
“We get large learnings,” provides John Murray, VP, World ISG Section & Enterprise Growth for 3D Techniques, of the motive behind the partnership. “We began with technical partnerships again within the late Nineteen Nineties, each in NASCAR in addition to Formulation 1. Nobody pushes more durable than motorsports groups. It is a 24/7 job feeding these wind tunnels which have huge appetites. The power to supply correct components and do it rapidly was vital. We realized and developed rapidly concerning supplies, processes and the wants of our prospects. That allowed us to use it to different industries as nicely. However in motorsports it is go quick or go dwelling.”
Velocity is, naturally, the championship-winning NASCAR crew’s key driver and it has relied closely on 3D Techniques’ ProX 800 stereolithography and Determine 4 Standalone 3D printers to enhance pace and efficiency throughout its automobiles, of which it fields 4 within the NASCAR Cup and two within the NASCAR Xfinity collection.
“We’re within the wind tunnel each week regularly, and we’re wanting to check dozens of components – it’s extremely costly to try this,” Van Landingham explains. “If components do not present up on the wind tunnel in time to check them, then we’re losing some huge cash and other people’s effort and time.”
The crew had beforehand used 3D printing to supply particular person components for its vehicles however now, with a bigger capability SLA system in-house, it’s in a position to produce a lot greater and correct components to the purpose the place its engineers can divide the entire physique of a racecar into smaller items to prototype and swap out a whole lot of optimised aerodynamic shapes for wind tunnel testing. On the latest 2024 NASCAR Ford Mustang Darkish Horse, it did simply that with varied 3D printed tiles fixed to the sub-structure of the full-scale automobile to analyse aerodynamic coefficients and decide the optimum form for pace earlier than making the ultimate carbon fibre physique panels.
“Now, printing a whole lot of components like that over a number of weeks’ time shouldn’t be solely attainable,” Van Landingham says, “but it surely’s sort of regular.”
Not solely has it change into the norm, but it surely’s additionally enabled the crew to discover totally new purposes. That’s largely all the way down to the scope of engineering-grade supplies, which have opened up alternatives not only for prototyping and match operate testing, however manufacturing components equivalent to TV digicam, pit gun, and pit cart parts, as nicely.
“With these printers come supplies that we weren’t used to utilizing,” Van Landingham explains. “We started to discover rubber supplies and now impulsively our engineers had been in a position to do gaskets and versatile bellows and issues that they weren’t doing yesterday. The know-how opens up an entire world of potentialities that we didn’t have earlier than.”
3D Techniques has even developed a cloth particularly for wind tunnel testing. Immediately identifiable by its purple hue, Accura Composite PIV was developed in collaboration with BWT Alpine F1 Crew to construct aerodynamic components for Particle Picture Velocimetry testing. “It’s totally purposely purple,” in line with Murray, who defined how the daring color helps to scale back the laser reflection impact from background surfaces aside from airborne particles when taking dependable PIV measurements.
Race towards time
Motorsport actually is a 24/7 operation to be the most effective. Machines run at full capability as a lot as attainable, and the crew typically outsources to Ford’s Additive Manufacturing Heart in Dearborn, MI or service suppliers to satisfy demand.
“Our most valuable commodity is time,” Van Landingham mentioned. “We race each weekend, and everyone sees that on TV or on the monitor. However on the engineering aspect, we’re racing between the races towards our rivals to design and 3D print components for our race vehicles for that subsequent race. That is how we compete between the races. And we will not do it with out this know-how and this partnership. We’re a aggressive sport, so we use know-how to attempt to advance our vehicles sooner and higher than our rivals.”
Stewart-Haas Racing has embraced additive. That’s largely all the way down to a need to win but additionally a willingness from its engineers, significantly its youthful cohort, who’ve grown up with 3D printers of their bedrooms and at the moment are attending to play with that very same know-how on an industrial scale. However Murray believes there’s one other vital issue at play.
“It all the time takes management,” Murray mentioned. “You possibly can have all of the machines and all of the resin you need, however it’s important to have folks with imaginative and prescient and individuals who actually are devoted to creating it carry out.”
Van Landingham added: “Like all new know-how, we now have to get used to it internally, tips on how to run it, tips on how to function it. However as soon as that honeymoon interval was behind us, these machines have simply been workhorses for us.”
And the machines have been put to work. There’s the driving force’s aspect mirror housing used for speedway tracks at Talladega and Daytona, which not solely holds a reflective mirror in order that the driving force can see outdoors but additionally acts as an aerodynamic machine that reduces drag to make the automobile go sooner. Then there are the printed hose couplers which will be rapidly related and disconnected to the highest of the driving force’s helmet to supply air-con. When NASCAR not too long ago started allowing racing within the rain, there was a sudden requirement for automobiles to incorporate a brand new windshield wiper, lights and a option to defog the home windows. A system was designed, printed and mounted on high of the sprint to permit contemporary air to blow to the within of the windshield and preserve it from fogging.
“As a result of we now have the additive manufacturing instruments in home,” Van Landingham elaborates, “it allowed us to even conceive of this technique.”
Then in fact, there’s the vital weight discount benefits and Stewart-Haas Racing’s engineers are consistently evaluating the designs of numerous components to uncover the place extra weight will be taken out.
“It is superb, yr after yr we predict we have got the automobile as gentle weight as it may be throughout the guidelines that NASCAR gives,” Van Landingham says. “However inevitably our engineers are tweaking the components over and over to scale back the burden. Not solely that, however to decrease the centre of gravity of the general mass of the automobile, which is admittedly vital in racing.”
Within the six years since that first set up, Stewart-Haas Racing has added extra machines and supplies to its toolkit. Van Landingham says he’s eager to get his fingers on 3D Techniques upcoming PSLA 270 excessive pace, projector-based system, which is claimed to mix the accuracy of SLA with the pace and supplies of Determine 4. That want for pace retains them centered however the crew’s ambition is even grander.
“If we may simply 3D print the entire automobile, that will be nice,” says Van Landingham.
Is he severe?
“Oh yeah, I might love to try this,” Van Landingham says, turning to Murray, “So, hurry up!”
This text initially appeared inside TCT Europe Version Vol. 32 Concern 5 and TCT North American Version Vol. 10 Concern 5. Subscribe right here to obtain your FREE print copy of TCT Journal, delivered to your door six instances a yr.
