trinckle
Audi Sport 3D printed fixtures
Off the back of its third TCT Award win for its fixturemate software, trinckle has revealed how Audio Sport is leveraging its design automation software to accelerate the production of crucial 3D printed jigs, fixtures and tools.
The Berlin-based software company, which took home the TCT Software Award sponsored by Polygonica at the 2024 TCT Awards ceremony last week, said the automotive manufacturer is using its fixturemate software to reduce development time by 90%, with fixture design time from 2-4 hours to just 10-20 minutes.
To date, Audi Sport has used 3D printing to produce up to 800 fixtures, jigs, and other tools in-house, and its Böllinger Höfe facility in Heilbronn, where the Audi e-tron GT fully electric car is in production, is said to have required over 200 new fixtures to be produced within a short time span. According to trinckle, without 3D printing and fixturemate, production would take several weeks with manual CAD design and conventional manufacturing. Now, by using this software tool and UltiMaker 3D printers in-house, part delivery is said to be more streamlined and allows engineers on the production line to quickly realise new manufacturing aids, without the need for design expertise.
Ole von Seelen, Chief Commercial Officer of trinckle 3D GmbH, said: "We are proud to highlight that Audi Sport was one of our first customers to use fixturemate, alongside other industry leaders such as Deutsche Bahn and ERIKS. The Audi Sport team has been more than just a client - their positive feedback culture has been extremely helpful in improving the design workflow again and again and keeping the intuitiveness at a top level. The input of our customers is essential to align our design automation as closely as possible to the needs of our industrial customers."
Speaking to TCT in a recent interview about the adoption of additive manufacturing technologies for the production of 'low hanging fruit' applications like jigs, fixtures and tooling, Florian Reichle, Commercial Managing Director at trickle3D, said he believed design to be the main challenge. fixturemate was developed to simplify and accelerate the creation of custom manufacturing fixtures through advanced algorithms, and has been adopted by several other players in automotive and transport, including Ford Motors which has achieved similar savings with its automated its design process, taking design time down from 2-4 hours to 10 minutes.
"The benefits are clear," Reichle told TCT. "Compared to traditional manufacturing, lead times are shorter, and there’s more control over the entire process, leading to better productivity. It also enables production staff to refine the tools they use, improving aspects such as ergonomics."
