Yearly, requirements group SAE Worldwide holds a contest referred to as Formulation SAE, during which college students from each undergraduate and graduate packages design, construct, and race small formula-style race automobiles. For this 12 months’s occasion, the College of Southern California’s (USC) Formulation SAE crew partnered with the UK’s Wayland Additive, an authentic gear producer (OEM) of electron-beam additive manufacturing (EBAM) {hardware}, to print a titanium exhaust collector.
In a case research that Wayland Additive launched, the Suspension Lead for the USC Racing crew, Samuel McCarthy, defined why exhaust collectors are such tough elements to fabricate — even for typical manufacturing processes:
“The exhaust collector is the half that joins every cylinder’s exhaust into one stream and it instantly impacts engine effectivity and efficiency. …There are normally two important design concerns: efficiency versus manufacturing problem,” McCarthy famous. “Optimum efficiency requires optimized angles of the tubes the place the exhaust stream meets, a sure preliminary contact of stream.
“Manufacturing the perfect exhaust collector with these most well-liked angles is usually not potential with conventional strategies, corresponding to welding, and there’s all the time a trade-off between [performance and manufacturing difficulty]. Through the use of AM, particularly Wayland’s NeuBeam course of, we’ve been capable of decrease the trade-off and get one of the best of each worlds.”
Notably, USC Racing first approached Wayland Additive at RAPID + TCT 2024 in Los Angeles, which came about on the finish of June. The collaborators then labored collectively remotely to design and print the ultimate half.
With the Formulation SAE deadline of Might 14-17, 2025, which means USC Racing and Wayland Additive efficiently designed, examined, and built-in the titanium exhaust collector in effectively below a 12 months — an particularly spectacular feat contemplating it’s a part with none in depth 3D printing monitor document, at the least when it comes to publicly out there info.
In keeping with McCarthy, the success of the ultimate half relied on the precise benefits of EBAM, particularly the decrease residual stresses on the half, when put next with powder mattress fusion (PBF): “The warmth cycles seen and excessive vibratory surroundings might fracture a [PBF] half. Additionally, the small hook retaining function would have confirmed too tough to descale.”
Ultimately, the half that Wayland produced decreased the exhaust collector’s size by 50 p.c, and helped USC Racing win third place in the autocross occasion at Formulation SAE. The USC automotive additionally completed an endurance problem that almost all of groups in 2024 weren’t capable of full, which was a key aim for USC Racing.
Except for the engineering achievements and efficiency milestones on show right here, it’s noteworthy that this challenge was solely made potential on account of the provision of a digitally-based manufacturing expertise and AM’s accelerated iteration cycle. It’s also important that, because of a gathering at a commerce present, an undergraduate engineering scholar was capable of entry a extremely area of interest, comparatively costly expertise.
All of these little particulars have been required to be introduced into concord as a way to yield a part that the world has by no means seen earlier than. The attractive factor about AM is that it permits makers to droop their disbelief about what’s bodily and logistically potential lengthy sufficient to broaden their imaginations, till creativeness breaks by way of into actuality. It permits engineers-in-training engaged on scholar tasks to collaborate with small companies midway the world over to out-design typical mass business.
Photographs courtesy of Wayland Additive
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