Car manufacturer Ford shows several components for production vehicles that the company has 3D-printed. The components were produced using 3D printing technology from US company Carbon.
Car manufacturer Ford is deploying 3D printing technology from US company Carbon to produce parts for various car models to order. The approach not only helps keep delivery times short, but also reduces the inventory of parts Ford has to hold to serve customers quickly.
The companies presented some examples of 3D-printed components during the Additive Manufacturing for Automotive Workshop at the 2019 North American International Auto Show (NAIAS) in US Detroit. These include a bracket for the air conditioning in a Ford Focus, a plug for the Ford F-150 Raptor and a holder for the Ford Mustang GT500's electric parking brake.
Curing resin with light
The products are manufactured using Carbon 3D printers based on its in-house developed 'digital light synthesis' technology. This technology is based on the 'CLIP process' and uses programmable liquid resin. CLIP deploys projected digital light to cure the resin.
Curing resin with digital light is not new. However, the method usually leads to relatively weak and brittle end products. Carbon addresses this by introducing an additional agent into the resin that is activated by heat. The resulting resin is called EPX 82 and, according to the company, combines functional strength, stiffness and temperature resistance. This makes the material suitable for automotive, industrial and consumer applications, among others. Technical information on EPX 82 can be found here.
Previous experiment with Stratasys
Ford has been pushing 3D printing for some time. Back in March 2017, for instance, the company announced it was experimenting with 3D printing large car parts using a Stratasys Infinite Build 3D printer. The company is exploring the possibility of 3D printing large parts consisting of just one component. The Stratasys Infinite Build 3D printer lends itself perfectly to this. The 3D printer uses fused deposition modelling (FDM), a technique in which a new layer of molten material is deposited each time and an object is built step by step.
A striking feature of the Stratasys Infinite Build 3D printer is the fact that it prints vertically, while most other 3D printers print horizontally. This is an important advantage, since with horizontal printing, the maximum dimensions of a printed object are limited by the height of the printer. With vertical printing, it is theoretically possible to print objects of unlimited length.
Days of printing
Stratasys' 3D printer features an industrial robot arm, which can automatically refill the printers with raw material. This robotic arm allows the 3D printer to print for hours or even days without human intervention.
Author: Wouter Hoeffnagel
Source: Ford Motor Company
Source: Carbon
Source: Stratasys
Source photo: Pixabay / creil91
