Motorsports and Additive Manufacturing

We are a major supplier to the industry and while we can’t talk about who our customers are, it’s probably fair to say that we are one of the major additive manufacturing producers for Formula 1 motorsport and the automotive industry.

F1 has been described as one of AM’s earliest adopters and has been using AM produced products in research and race cars for more than a decade. The complex nature of F1 components, the high stress factors to which they are subjected, and the short production runs required, makes AM an ideal process to produce F1 parts.

F1 teams strive for the ideal balance of lightness, weight, strength and driver safety. AM production has helped to enable them to meet these aims and they have only been achieved because of the flexibility of the AM process. It allows products to be designed and manufactured in ways that simply are not possible using traditional fabrication techniques. AM Production allows parts to be manufactured where material is placed only where it is required and not as a result of the physical or financial limitations of the manufacturing process. AM has now reached beyond the relatively small and lightly loaded components to become able to produce complex geometries which have been manufactured to save weight, maintain strength and which are difficult to make conventionally, such as roll hoops, flanges and collectors. As a result of our AM production capacity and consistency, we’ve become a major supplier of AM produced exhaust components for F1. Our customers have found that the use of AM production for F1 roll hoops, flanges and collectors is the perfect solution for their needs. In addition to that the parts geometries are accurate and repeatable giving designers a large selection of geometry options to optimise performance.

The automotive industry and F1 will continue to use 3D printing and AM production in increasing quantities. As the seasons close, teams will be assessing their successes and failures on the track in order to improve their placings for the following year. As they go into the winter break, teams will be building on their learnings from the previous season. They will be improving the designs of their current AM parts, while developing new and additional AM parts for their cars in readiness for the new season.

The future of AM production in F1 can only go one way, there will be more AM parts and we will continue to be a key component in the fast-paced world of F1.

Get in touch with the team today to find out more about the high-quality parts we deliver on time.

 

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