Another dimension: EVs could accelerate 3D printing

Automakers and suppliers have been using 3D printing to save money and time building prototypes for years.

Now the technology — known more formally as additive manufacturing — is beginning to reach the production line.

Faster, larger machines are helping to make that happen. So are electric vehicles, which require different parts at different quantities than automakers are used to getting from their established supply chains.

"If we think about making a crankshaft today for an internal-combustion engine, that part has been made for 100 years, and there are 50 companies that are experts in making crankshafts. There's a very good process and it probably isn't a good application for 3D printing," said Jon Walker, automotive specialist and business development manager at EOS North America, a supplier of 3D printers and software.

"But if we are looking at extending the battery range in an electric vehicle or how to house a large battery in a vehicle, that's a challenge that's maybe 5 years old or 10 years old," Walker said. "We don't have that supply chain baked out yet. It is a much lower volume and higher cost-per-part opportunity. And that is a great place to look for implementing additive."

Although 3D printing isn't yet fast enough to deliver most parts at automotive-production volume speeds, virtually every automaker is using the technology in some fashion. It has become a vital tool in product development, giving engineers prototype parts in hours instead of weeks, and at a far lower cost than with traditional methods.

Ellen Lee, Ford Motor Co.'s additive manufacturing technical leader, said Ford uses 3D-printed objects in its plants to aid manufacturing. She believes 3D-printed parts eventually will replace traditional production methods in some cases.

"For about 30 years, we have realized the business efficiencies that 3D printing can provide in terms of design, engineering and validation through prototyping," Lee said at an industry briefing held by the Center for Automotive Research. "This has significantly impacted the way we design new cars today. More recently, we've also realized the manufacturing efficiencies we can get by 3D printing tools, fixtures, jigs and other aids that help us on the manufacturing floor."

But because making single parts one layer at a time on a 3D printer is far too slow to keep pace with the production speed for most vehicles — a new Ford F-150, for example, rolls off the assembly line every 52 seconds — components made by additive manufacturing have been limited mostly to custom cosmetic trim pieces or super-lightweight parts for exotic high-performance, low-volume supercars.

"The No. 1 answer why the industry is not using 3D printing today is speed and cost of parts," Walker said. "Every year, 3D technology is getting faster and faster. The materials have gotten half as expensive in that time and certain machines have gotten four times more productive. The leaps and bounds are very, very quick but it is still not quite perfect yet for the automotive industry."

Advances in 3D-printing technology, such as new materials and machines that can produce multiple copies of parts at the same time, are expected to result in more 3D-printed parts on production lines, possibly within the next three years, said Rick Lucas, chief technology officer for ExOne, a Pittsburgh- based manufacturer of 3D printers.

ExOne makes printers that use a method called binder jetting, which is particularly suited for many automotive applications. Binder jet printers use powdered materials such as plastic, sand, ceramics and certain metals and a bonding agent — glue, basically — to rapidly build up layer by layer a part that is created using data from a digital design file. Because the printer head moves fast over a large area, it builds the layers quickly.

Lee said Ford sees binder jet printing as "a potential technology to get to volume production."

Unlike a 3D printer that uses laser beams or electron beams and makes one or two parts at a time, a binder jet printer could, for example, make dozens of brackets at once because the printing area or bed is far larger and the layers are built up much faster.

But some of the speed in which binder jet parts are printed is lost if post-processing work is required. Metal binder jet-printed parts must be cured at high temperatures to fuse the particles. And binder jetting has not yet been perfected for aluminum, a metal in very high demand in the auto industry. But that's coming, Lucas says.

Matthias Schmidt-Lehr, a managing partner at consulting firm Ampower GmbH & Co. in Hamburg, Germany, says binder jet technology is at least five years away from being able to produce parts at automotive volumes.

"Binder jetting has a good chance for being used in automotive. I don't think high volume in terms of 100,000 [parts] will make sense, but everything below that has a chance," he told Automotive News in an e-mail. "Also consider that the timeline we are talking about realistically is between five and 10 years until we will see production parts since many major technical issues are yet to be solved."

ExOne is preparing to launch its largest machine later this year. Designed specifically for automakers, it has a build volume — its parts-making capacity at one time — of 160 liters or around 5.6 cubic feet.

Binder jet printers and ovens to cure the parts can cost between $1 million and $1.5 million, depending on size.

The first 3D-printed parts for production vehicles are already here. But only a few can be found on 2020 models.

BMW is one of the first companies to offer 3D-printed parts with the Mini Yours program that launched two years ago. Mini buyers can customize their vehicles with factory-made trim items that can include their name and other personalized art elements on the dash, threshold or outside on the trim surrounding the side marker lights.

The customer can order the 3D-printed parts at a dealership or online. The parts are printed in Germany, and most are delivered within 30 days.

High-end vehicles from Porsche, Audi, Lamborghini and Bugatti also are made with a smattering of 3D-printed trim parts.

Cummins, the Columbus, Ind., diesel engine maker, sold its first 3D-printed part, an engine bracket, last year and is ramping up production of others. About 200 3D-printed parts, mostly for older engines long out of production, have been sold to customers, says Brett Boas, Cummins director of advanced manufacturing in the company's research and technology group.

Cummins, the manufacturer of the turbodiesel engine in heavy-duty Ram pickups, recently bought two 3D binder jet printers that can produce parts up to 60 times faster than printers that use lasers or electron beams. Boas said Cummins believes parts eventually will be made on 3D printers for truck engines produced in volumes of 5,000 to 10,000 units per year.

But the company's immediate focus is training engine designers how to create parts that reduce waste and weight and that increase efficiency, Boas said. Some of the efficiencies Cummins will see from its growing 3D-printed manufacturing capability will include making parts on demand close to where they are needed, which would reduce the amount of dead money tied up in carrying warehouses full of replacement parts.

At Nissan's North American Tech Center in suburban Detroit, engineers last year revealed that they 3D-printed a prototype part for the Nissan Titan through binder jetting.

The part, a bracket that mounts on the front of the pickup, holds a sensor for the truck's intelligent cruise control.

The 3D-printed bracket needs only one seam weld instead of two and weighs 47 percent less than the conventional bracket, Nissan said. The bracket was made on an ExOne machine.

Engineers are still testing the part and it is not yet greenlighted for production, a Nissan spokesman said. But as with Cummins engine parts, that bracket — or similar components that are part of optional systems on low-volume vehicles — could be a perfect fit for binder jetting. Nissan sold 31,514 Titans last year.

General Motors is extensively using additive manufacturing to make the tooling for parts in some upcoming vehicles, saving not only time and money but also giving designers and engineers more flexibility to make fast last-minute changes.

GM plans to use 3D-printed parts for highly crafted interiors on future generations of Cadillacs, sources with knowledge of the plans told Automotive News. And 3D-printed tooling is a key reason GM is able to speed the Hummer EV pickup to market in a little more than two years.

"There are 30,000 parts and pieces on each of our vehicles," Kevin Quinn, GM's director of additive design and manufacturing, told Wired magazine. "A realistic change is maybe 100 or 1,000 pieces have a chance to be printed. Five years from now, could that number raise to 5,000? Ten years from now, to 10,000? The result might be a prettier, more material-efficient, lighter, faster car."