College of Southern California (USC) Racing – Components SAE Workforce has partnered with Wayland Additive to additively manufacture the exhaust collector of its 2025 automotive.
Components SAE is an annual engineering schooling competitors that sees groups compete in a sequence of off monitor and on monitor occasions in opposition to the clock.
Every workforce designs, builds and races an inner combustion engine automotive with restricted assets inside the college yr.
This yr, USC Racing – Components SAE Workforce linked up with Wayland to harness NeuBeam 3D printing know-how to supply a posh titanium half that has been troublesome to fabricate with conventional strategies, in addition to different 3D printing processes. The exhaust collector joins every of the cylinder exhausts into one stream and straight impacts the effectivity and efficiency of the engine. Made up of a sequence of linked tubes, the system requires optimised angles the place the exhaust move meets.
Historically, to fabricate the exhaust collector would require welding and manually slicing 9 1mm titanium tubes. 5 of the 9 additionally have to be stretched to measurement, so getting all 9 to suit along with minimal gaps is a prolonged and extremely expert course of.
“As a result of historically manufactured collectors are welded and comprised of tubes which have to be lower very exactly at troublesome angles it compounds out there area issues: the tighter the packaging requirement the harder it’s to make,” stated Samuel McCarthy, a scholar on the USC and Suspension Lead for USC Racing – Components SAE Workforce. “The Wayland produced half diminished the size of our exhaust collector by 50%. And it is a actually huge deal.”
The 2 events got here collectively finally yr’s RAPID + TCT occasion in Los Angeles, with members of each groups rapidly collaborating across the design and testing of 3D printed components. After a number of design iterations and an intensive testing marketing campaign as soon as components have been delivered to USC Racing, the exhaust collector was deemed able to race between Might 14-17, 2025. USC Racing achieved its greatest outcomes of threerd in autocross, an occasion which challenges the automotive for the utmost tempo and achieved a workforce inner purpose of finishing an endurance occasion which solely 49 of the 120 groups completed in 2024.
Keegan Duarte, Business Purposes Engineer at Wayland Additive, commented: “Wayland’s Business Workforce labored intently with Sam and the USC Racing workforce to completely perceive their technical and efficiency necessities. We collaborated by way of a number of design iterations to stability manufacturability with optimum half efficiency. NeuBeam’s low residual stress and minimal post-processing have been key benefits for this demanding software. With the ability to rapidly flip round components on the Calibur3 made an actual distinction beneath tight timelines. The collaboration demonstrated how Wayland’s know-how can straight handle and overcome sensible manufacturing constraints. We hope to maintain working with the USC workforce — wishing them the perfect of luck of their future races.”
