Additive Manufacturing is increasingly popular in the automotive industry for products intended for the road, but also in Formula 1 to create highly complex and light components. Often mistakenly referred to as 3D printing, Additive Manufacturing technology is a vast branch that encompasses various production techniques, the results of which are pieces that would otherwise be unfeasible. Their use is now daily in Formula 1, also useful for experimenting with new pieces without compromising the Budget Cap.
The utility of Additive Manufacturing
Normal production techniques, such as milling, turning, EDM, laser cutting, waterjet cutting and others involve the removal of material from the starting block to obtain the final object. Additive Manufacturing, on the other hand, as the name suggests, is based on the opposite process. Material is deposited and added from time to time up to the final component, almost like building a house brick by brick. Although Additive Manufacturing techniques have been popular in the automotive field for years, they are still relatively new technologies when compared to the long history of the modern industry. For this reason, although the number of pieces made by adding material is constantly growing, the teams continue their research and investments to ensure that the quality of the final product is high, so that they can be used to produce increasingly critical and subject to at higher stresses.
The advantages of Additive Manufacturing are many. One of them is that building the piece by adding material is possible make entirely hollow components or with complex geometries, as light as they are impossible to produce with traditional techniques. In addition, net of post-print processing and finishing, since there is no removal of material, waste and costs are also reduced. Finally, the Additive falls between rapid prototyping techniquesi.e. it allows the creation of prototypes of new parts at low cost and not necessarily in their final material, without, however, the need to invest in an ad hoc production process before being sure of the effectiveness of the update.
The seven families
Additive Manufacturing is classified into seven families of different techniques, although new ones are always being added as progress progresses. 3D printing actually refers to the techniques of jetting, the equivalent of a three-dimensional printer. An injector deposits molten polymeric material onto a platform and moves through space through a system of sliding arms and/or tracks, building the final object. Another family of Additive Manufacturing is that of Powder Bed Fusion, also known as sintering. A metallic powder is applied to the base or part under construction and is fused into a compact mass by a heat source, laser beam or electron beam.
A particularly fascinating technology is that of VAT photopolymerization, a family which includes the technique of stereolithography. A vat contains a photosensitive liquid resin, which polymerizes and solidifies when struck by an optical or laser beam. The beams thus aim to hit precise points of the liquid resin, to solidify it exactly according to the desired geometries. A further example of a widespread technique in the field of Additive Manufacturing is that of lamination, in which different sheets are added on top of each other and compressed together. Normally there is a tendency to apply an adhesive resin to compact the different layers, but a valid alternative is that of ultrasonic welding.
Applications in Formula 1
The applications of Additive Manufacturing in Formula 1 are numerous. Sintering is already being used to produce some mechanical components that are not subject to critical mechanical and thermal stresses. However, the field in which the most numerous examples are found is that of cooling system. In fact, radiators are required to dissipate large quantities of heat in the most compact possible volume, in order not to limit the freedom of aerodynamic design. In order to satisfy the demand, the ratio between the heat exchange surface and the volume of the radiator is increased as much as possible, creating ultra-thin tubes and fins, sometimes with a thickness lower than that of a human hair. Additive Manufacturing is therefore essential to create similar geometries and there are now several intercoolers made with this technique.
Applications of 3D printing, on the other hand, are found for those components that do not have a structural function, for example the supports for the sensors and for the cameras. Furthermore, the usefulness of these techniques in the field of rapid prototyping is often exploited, for example by creating temporary aerodynamic updates, which are evaluated in free tests before proceeding in the factory with the expensive production of the molds and the final carbon component. Additive Manufacturing is an increasingly rich world both in industry and in Formula 1 and its applications are becoming more numerous with each passing season.
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