Novastar News

Vehicles, motorbikes, boats, trains – mobility manufacturers are constantly searching for the manufacturing technologies that can help them reduce time to market, lower cost, create a better product and meet goals for sustainability.

We briefly review key applications of plastics additive manufacturing, aka 3D printing, in the product development and manufacturing of mobility products. 

Accelerate Product Development Cycles

Additive manufacturing enables one to quickly – within hours or days — create multiple different designs of prototypes, printed in the material with characteristics of the final product (strength, resolution, detail), and iterate a number of times to optimize the product or part design. This is especially critical with the emergence of the electric vehicle industry’s race to market.

Eliminate or Reduce Tooling Costs

Some manufacturing technologies require several prototypes and then a mold fabricated to create the product – which can take weeks or months and tens of thousands of dollars. Once the mold is made – if a design change is needed – it is expensive to replace. This can lead to a reluctance to make changes that could improve the product.

In the appropriate application, additive manufacturing can speed time to market by slashing weeks or months off the development process and reduce or eliminate the cost of tooling. Additive is not the right technology for every application or quantity of parts needed – but where it is a good fit it can save the manufacturer time and money, and result in a better product. 

Consolidate Assemblies into a Single Part

Because Additive allows a designer to create complex geometries – usually with the help of CAD software – often an assembly of parts can be replaced with a single part.  This can save the manufacturer the cost of materials (eliminate the need for fasteners or adhesives), the labor to put the assembly together – and possibly reduce the total amount of material, lowering costs and light weighting parts. 

100% Customized Manufacturing Aids

Jigs, fixtures and nests are manufacturing aids used in part manufacture, or the assembly of multiple parts.  Additive allows one to make exactly the aid needed for the application, quickly, at a lower cost, and with the ability to make multiple customized ones – or replacements – fast and easy. The assembly of wire harnesses is one example in the mobility industry that is taking full advantage of additive for multiple custom manufacturing aids. 

Soft & Flexible Products

With continuous material development in Additive Manufacturing, materials with greater ranges of strength and flexibility are becoming available. Coupled with complex geometries such as 3D printed lattice structures– materials can be made soft and strong. Automotive applications include headrests and custom seating. These softer more flexible materials can also be used in soft touch robotic end-of-arm tooling and nests that do not mar or scratch delicate parts. 

Airtight and Watertight Parts

With the appropriate additive manufacturing technology and materials, parts in mobility products such as air vents or ducts for air conditioning or intake manifolds have been successfully 3D printed and used as prototypes or in production. A fluid reservoir has been 3D printed as a prototype – and achieved required low porosity to be fluid tight. 

Custom Fasteners 

Auto panel clip, screw clip for speakers, door trim clip, door panel retaining clip, hood prop clips, power steering reservoir clips, sunroof slider tail repair clips, ignition wire clips – these are just a small sample of CAD files one can find on popular sharing platforms for “automotive clips” that can be 3D printed – as aftermarket parts, prototypes or original equipment. And because of technologies like powder bed fusion – that facilitate printing several 100’s of small fasteners overnight – 3D printing fasters for prototyping, bridge production, replacement or aftermarket parts can be cost effective.

Integrate Textures into Part Designs

Style and aesthetics are very important in new vehicle design. Being able to add high resolution 3D printed textures – such as leather grain – onto prototype interior parts is one example of getting to a high-quality design intent fast and at low cost. After-market accessories that make driving safer and more fun also benefit from interesting textures printed right on the part.  

Sustainability

Sustainability is top of mind for all major manufacturers. A manufacturer can choose additive materials that can be recycled, for example, shredded to be melted and used in injection molding. Another option is selecting an additive technology wherein the powder not used in one 3D print build can be re-captured and used in the next build – instead of being thrown away.   

The whole concept of additive manufacturing leans towards sustainability in a number of ways: printing only what you need, and then on-demand, so one does not need to warehouse volumes of replacement parts over many years for many different product models. Creating products on-demand close to where they will be used – eliminating shipping and transportation costs and the carbon footprints that come with them. 

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Explore Additive Manufacturing Mobility Applications in Person

Novastar Solutions invites you to attend an Open House Thursday April 21, 2022 anytime from 10am – 2pm at 12901 Newburgh in Livonia, Mi 48150 at our HP 3D Printing Demonstration Center. 

Register Here

With greater knowledge of designing for additive manufacturing (DfAM), engineers and designers can take advantage of the new opportunities that additive manufacturing (AM) makes possible. 

Advantages of 3D printing technologies include: incredible design freedom, faster innovation in product development reducing time to market, distributed manufacturing, less material waste, mass customization, lower cost by avoiding tooling, and more.  

Adopting additive manufacturing involves more than just evaluating and procuring new equipment. It can reach its full potential if designers develop a new mindset.

Select the Best Candidate Parts

Not all parts are good candidates for additive manufacturing.  Depending on the technology one uses, parts may be too flat (can lead to warping) or too dense (uses too much material driving costs up) to benefit from AM. With some technologies, these challenges can be addressed in design by the orientation in the build unit for flat parts, or hollowing out the design for dense parts. 

A part may be too simple to take advantage of additive manufacturing and is best manufactured at lower cost with other manufacturing technologies.

Some of the best candidates for Additive are not end-use parts but rather jigs, fixtures or molds. Often these are needed in lower quantities, can be completely customized, and time and money saved as no tooling is required to fabricate them.

Part Consolidation & Assembly

Parts need to fit the build space or envelope of the printer – and if too big may need to be made as multiple parts, and later joined.  Likewise, an assembly of multiple parts may be able to be 3D printed as one part, saving costs of material, fabrication and labor.

Using Color or 3D Textures

Some parts can be enhanced by directly printing in color, for example, assembly instructions or serial numbers.  In other cases, parts can be dyed any color after post production is complete. 

Textures (honeycomb, lattice, knubs) can be functional or aesthetic – increasing the utility of the part (e.g., embossed serial numbers unique to each part) or its overall attractiveness and value.

Design for Post Processing

Most additive manufacturing technologies require post processing steps – removing support structures, additional machining, etc.  With powder bed fusion 3D printing technologies, parts must have powder removed from their surface after printing.   A designer could integrate holes in a part to facilitate the removal of powder during post processing, or make the part easier to bead blast.

Topology Optimization

A sophisticated technique, topology optimization software can be applied to a design to optimize the geometry of a part for light weighting (saving cost with less material), improved stiffness, size (to fit more parts in a build) or ergonomics – without compromising mechanical performance.

Design for Cost

Examines what drives part cost, how to reduce cost through part design, and results in strategies, techniques, and tools for minimizing cost per part.

Job Preparation

With powder bed fusion, for example, designers consider how parts are nested within the build chamber to make design decisions that  impact cost reduction, final part quality and repeatability. 

Techniques and strategies to successfully design for additive manufacturing vary widely depending on the 3D printing technology used.  Manufacturers of 3D printers offer tutorials, training and onsite advice to their customers to assure they are successful applying the new mindset for designing for additive to meet their engineering challenges.

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Mary Baumgarten

Mary Baumgarten is a Principal and Marketing Director at Livonia MI based Novastar Solutions – an HP 3D Printing Partner.    Previously Mary was an Account Supervisor of Database Marketing at Leo Burnett Advertising and holds degrees from  U of M Ann Arbor and an MBA from the University of Colorado.  

Novastar Solutions is an Automation Alley member and also provides Calibration services, engineering IT hardware and software and IT lifecycle management services.