The growing user of additive manufacturing, the automotive industry has always been in need of more innovative, light-weighted, durable and high performance parts, something that the 3D printing technology can achieve. As an early adopter of additive manufacturing, mainly for rapid prototyping at the beginning, the automotive industry is widely exploring the possibilities of 3D printing for creating end-use applications indicating an exciting development for the industry.
According to the SmarTech report, by 2025 the revenue of AM in automotive part production is expected to grow to $5.8 billion.
Greater design flexibility
One famous benefit of the AM technologies is that it allows designers and engineers greater flexibility, therefore they can test and make multiple versions of their design. Moreover, AM allows these variations to be made faster and shorten the lead time significantly.
Benefits:
Recommended AM technologies:
(Metals)
(Engineering plastics)
(XL Metal)
(Engineering Plastics)
Customization
Customization is one of the most obvious benefits for the automakers. Therefore, the automotive industry is already utilizing 3D printing technologies for its luxury and motorsport segments, but also for personalized parts with many unique options for the interior and exterior of the vehicles.
Benefits:
(Image credits: Press BMW group)
(Image credits: Press BMW group)
Recommended AM technologies:
(Carbon reinforced materials)
(Engineering plastics)
(Viscous materials Ex: silicone)
(Engineering Plastics)
Complex Geometries
Optimizing weight and integration of parts
Additive manufacturing technologies give a lot of freedom when it comes to the complexity of the part, and the level of complexity plays a minor role in the production cost. In the automotive industry there are many parts that contain internal channels (for conformal cooling) or have requirements to be lightweight, with fine meshes or durable. AM technologies enable these requirements to be easily fulfilled.
Benefits:
Recommended AM technologies:
(Metals)
(Engineering plastics)
(Engineering Plastics)
(Metal, sand casted parts)
Jigs, Fixtures and Tooling
Jigs, fixtures and tooling are used enormously in the automotive industry and to produce them the companies are (some of the were) using traditional manufacturing methods like casting, welding assembling or CNC machining. However, these processes require intensive planning, machining and skilled operators resulting in long lead times, high production costs and don’t offer great flexibility in new designs.
3D printing being the ideal alternative, unsurprisingly can allow fast and easy alternation between design of parts and tools, fast lead times and lower production costs.
Benefits:
(Photo credit: Ultimaker)
Recommended AM technologies:
(Plastics, engineering plastics)
(Plastics)
(Plastics)
(Engineering plastics)
(Engineering plastics)
Spare parts
Like for many other industries also in the automotive industry, one of the most obvious uses for additive manufacturing would be to produce parts that are no longer manufactured. This is usually a case for models of cars that are older or for more custom parts that are measured for specific cars or for cars with limited production.
However the case is, 3D printing allows the convenient manufacturing process to be substituted as 3D printing is economical and perfectly suited for small batches.
Benefits:
(Photo credit: DSM)
Recommended AM technologies:
(Plastics, engineering plastics)
(Engineering plastics)
(Engineering plastics)
(Metals)
