Alfa Romeo Sauber F1 Team’s C37 on the track at the 2018 FIA Formula 1 Chinese Grand Prix.
Sauber Motorsport AG, the company operating the Alfa Romeo Sauber F1 Team, has installed five new 3D Systems ProX 800 SLA 3D Printers at its headquarters and engineering facilities in Hinwil, Switzerland.
Sauber has been using 3D Systems’ machines for over a decade within its Additive Manufacturing department which already includes six selective laser sintering systems from 3D Systems amongst other printing technologies.
“When we decided to upgrade our SLA production capability, we felt it was time to take our cooperation with 3D Systems to a deeper level. We also needed to expand our capacity so replacing some of the older 3D Systems SLA’s with the higher throughput ProX 800 was the natural choice,” says Christoph Hansen, head of additive manufacturing, at Sauber. “We are using 3D Systems’ SLA solutions predominantly and extensively for wind tunnel testing, but also for tooling for carbon laminating as well as vacuum casting for silicon parts.”
The technology has been applied to a 60 percent scale test model of a Formula 1 race car used for wind tunnel testing. SLS and SLA 3D printers are used for everything from front wings, brake ducts and suspension covers to engine covers, internal ducts and hand deflectors.
“We can’t really compare this process to conventional manufacturing because it would be impossible to do it any other way than 3D printing; we require many parts with superior surface quality in a very short time,” says Reto Trachsel, head of aero design, at Sauber. “There have been times when the wind tunnel, which is also used by our third party customers, has been running 24/7 and we have been leveraging our 3D Systems’ solutions to produce 200 to 300 plastic parts per work day.”
Mariano Collidoro
Rollhoop part for wind tunnel testing model produced on 3D Systems ProX 800 SLA 3D printer.
Final parts are typically produced in carbon fibre using both conventionally manufactured and 3D printed moulding and tooling.
“The Alfa Romeo Sauber F1 Team draws on a variety of 3D Systems’ SLA materials to produce tools for different applications. For example, we laminate carbon parts using tools produced in Bluestone material and we use the Xtreme material for vacuum casting tools to produce the sealings,” says Hansen. “Why do we 3D print the tools instead of using conventional tooling techniques? The answer is easy – we get the design complexity for free! This is absolutely essential for parts like complex duct systems.”
Sauber also uses 3D printing within its Engineering services which delivers precision mock-ups, jigs and fixtures, tooling and serial production to third-party companies across Europe. Last year, the company penned a three-year technology partnership with Additive Industries, to ramp up the production of metal parts for its race-ready cars and external applications.
