Yearly, requirements group SAE Worldwide holds a contest known as Formulation SAE, during which college students from each undergraduate and graduate packages design, construct, and race small formula-style race vehicles. For this 12 months’s occasion, the College of Southern California’s (USC) Formulation SAE workforce partnered with the UK’s Wayland Additive, an authentic gear producer (OEM) of electron-beam additive manufacturing (EBAM) {hardware}, to print a titanium exhaust collector.
In a case examine that Wayland Additive launched, the Suspension Lead for the USC Racing workforce, Samuel McCarthy, defined why exhaust collectors are such tough components to fabricate — even for typical manufacturing processes:
“The exhaust collector is the half that joins every cylinder’s exhaust into one stream and it straight impacts engine effectivity and efficiency. …There are normally two crucial design concerns: efficiency versus manufacturing problem,” McCarthy famous. “Optimum efficiency requires optimized angles of the tubes the place the exhaust movement meets, a sure preliminary contact of movement.
“Manufacturing the perfect exhaust collector with these most popular angles is mostly not potential with conventional strategies, equivalent to welding, and there’s all the time a trade-off between [performance and manufacturing difficulty]. Through the use of AM, particularly Wayland’s NeuBeam course of, we now have been in a position to reduce the trade-off and get one of the best of each worlds.”
Notably, USC Racing first approached Wayland Additive at RAPID + TCT 2024 in Los Angeles, which came about on the finish of June. The collaborators then labored collectively remotely to design and print the ultimate half.
With the Formulation SAE deadline of Might 14-17, 2025, which means that USC Racing and Wayland Additive efficiently designed, examined, and built-in the titanium exhaust collector in properly beneath a 12 months — an particularly spectacular feat contemplating it’s a part with none intensive 3D printing observe document, no less than by way of publicly out there data.
In accordance with McCarthy, the success of the ultimate half trusted the particular benefits of EBAM, particularly the decrease residual stresses on the half, when put next with powder mattress fusion (PBF): “The warmth cycles seen and excessive vibratory surroundings might fracture a [PBF] half. Additionally, the small hook retaining characteristic would have confirmed too tough to descale.”
In the long run, the half that Wayland produced decreased the exhaust collector’s size by 50 p.c, and helped USC Racing win third place in the autocross occasion at Formulation SAE. The USC automotive additionally completed an endurance problem that almost all of groups in 2024 weren’t in a position to full, which was a key objective for USC Racing.
Apart from the engineering achievements and efficiency milestones on show right here, it’s noteworthy that this challenge was solely made potential on account of the supply of a digitally-based manufacturing expertise and AM’s accelerated iteration cycle. Additionally it is vital that, because of a gathering at a commerce present, an undergraduate engineering pupil was in a position to entry a extremely area of interest, comparatively costly expertise.
All of these little particulars have been required to be introduced into concord so as to yield a part that the world has by no means seen earlier than. The attractive factor about AM is that it allows makers to droop their disbelief about what’s bodily and logistically potential lengthy sufficient to increase their imaginations, till creativeness breaks by into actuality. It permits engineers-in-training engaged on pupil tasks to collaborate with small companies midway the world over to out-design typical mass business.
Pictures courtesy of Wayland Additive
Subscribe to Our E-mail E-newsletter
Keep up-to-date on all the most recent information from the 3D printing business and obtain data and affords from third social gathering distributors.
Add your 3D Fashions and get them printed shortly and effectively.
