From the September 2023 subject of Automotive and Driver.
There’s normally a trade-off between the price of the equipment a producer employs to make a component and the price of producing the half itself. Firms can make investments tens of millions in costly equipment to scale shortly and decrease manufacturing prices, or they will save capital by investing in much less dear, however extra time- and labor-intensive, tooling that makes it more durable to provide components en masse and at low price.
Czinger Autos believes 3-D printing gives a substitute for this causal relationship. The nascent California-based automaker is placing its cash the place its mouth is by using this manufacturing technique on its 21C hypercar.
To three-D print a Czinger entails a course of known as powder-bed fusion with selective laser melting. You begin with a floor that is lined with powdered metallic, then hit it with laser beams to fuse the powdered particles collectively to kind a layer of metallic right into a pre decided form. Czinger repeats this time and again, with a further layer of metallic fusing to the layer earlier than it, till the half emerges.
Utilizing 3-D printing permits Czinger to design and produce elements which might be lighter however no weaker than these constructed by different building strategies, in response to the hypercar maker.
“We’re designing these components utilizing a brand new type of computer-aided design,” says Lukas Czinger, the chief working officer and co-founder of Czinger. “We offer the scale and cargo parameters and let the software program create the half.”
Numerous alloys of aluminum make up many of the automaker’s 3-D-printed components. Czinger makes use of proprietary powders to maximise power, promote fusion, and decrease soot in the course of the printing course of.
Plus, with no outlined molds or presses, updating a component’s design is fast and simple. “And there is not any price penalty for making a change,” says Ewan Baldry, chief engineer.
In keeping with Baldry, the biggest 3-D-printed half Czinger at the moment produces is the 21C’s transmission housing, which pushes the boundaries of the utmost 20-inch dice the automaker’s 3-D printer can spit out. Going wider would require a bigger powder mattress, however Czinger has optimized its equipment for fast and correct printing.
The rear subframe resembles some form of mechanical skeleton.
“We use a dozen one-kilowatt lasers that function concurrently to construct components 80 to 100 microns [0.003 to 0.004 inch] at a time,” Czinger says. Constructing a 20-inch-tall half requires some 5000 layers.
Although 3-D printing takes time, it is not the prolonged activity it as soon as was. “5 years in the past, our course of might solely fuse 15 to twenty milliliters of fabric per hour,” Czinger says. “Right now we’re doing 300.”
Czinger expects printing speeds to proceed to extend. He anticipates that the corporate will quickly have the ability to economically produce lots of of 1000’s of 3-D-printed components every year.
The upright, with the integral brake caliper is extra like a robotic wasp nest. The design course of makes use of synthetic intelligence to create these natural shapes, and 3-D printing places materials precisely the place it’s wanted.
Not many 29-year-olds can put “co-founder of a hypercar firm” on their résumé. Lukas Czinger can, although.
Contributing Editor
Csaba Csere joined Automotive and Driver in 1980 and by no means actually left. After serving as Technical Editor and Director, he was Editor-in-Chief from 1993 till his retirement from energetic responsibility in 2008. He continues to dabble in automotive journalism and LeMons racing, in addition to ministering to his 1965 Jaguar E-type, 2017 Porsche 911, and trio of bikes—when not snowboarding or mountaineering close to his house in Colorado.
Senior Editor, Options
Like a sleeper agent activated late within the sport, Elana Scherr didn’t know her calling at a younger age. Like many women, she deliberate to be a vet-astronaut-artist, and got here closest to that final one by attending UCLA artwork college. She painted photos of automobiles, however didn’t personal one. Elana reluctantly received a driver’s license at age 21 and found that she not solely beloved automobiles and needed to drive them, however that different individuals beloved automobiles and needed to examine them, which meant someone needed to write about them. Since receiving activation codes, Elana has written for quite a few automobile magazines and web sites, protecting classics, automobile tradition, expertise, motorsports, and new-car opinions.
