Strakka Racing's Le Mans Car
Strakka Racing's Le Mans Car
As you enter hall 3A here at the Birmingham NEC for the 20thTCT Show + Personalize you’re greeted with the site of Strakka Racing’s DOME S103 LMP2 car fresh from competing in motorsports most gruelling event, Le Mans 24.
“My first experiences with 3D printing were brittle parts perhaps suitable to prototyping,” says Strakka Racing Team Principal, Dan Walmsley as he walks me around the car. “Here we are now with 3D printed parts on a car that completed Le Mans 24, covered as many miles in 24 hours as an F1 car does over the course of a whole season.”
The car is proving quite the draw to the crowds walking into the show and just across the aisle is the company responsible for the parts that endured those gruelling hours over in France, Stratasys. The 3D printing giant’s huge stand (E14) features a number of interesting user studies none more so than the Strakka Racing car.
Some of the parts on the car that were 3D printed are very visible, the camera mount for instance is unmistakably 3D printed using FDM technology but it was the use of 3D printing alongside traditional manufacturing that really benefitted the team.
“We started off printing just a few components, but the car wasn’t quite as fast as we hoped,” explains Walmsley. “We had a few handling issues so we started to refine and develop all the components, not only did 3D printing become a rapid solution towards reengineering the car but also the accuracy of build. Although we had a lot of 3D printed components the 3D printing of tooling was more critical.”
A specific example of this is the car’s dive planes on the very front of the car, their design hugely effects the aerodynamics and therefore performance of the car.
“The profile of those is very sensitive to the performance of the car so we had lots of iterations, all of the tooling was done using 3D printing. This meant that we could get iteration in a matter of days whereas a traditional lead time for a carbon composite part like that is 6-7 weeks.”
That time compression is hugely beneficial to any race team, 3D printing gave Strakka’s engineers more freedom to create parts that were lightweight and aerodynamic. The time also came in handy when the team ran into some regulatory problems.
“The FIA took issue with our door system,” details Walmsley. “Very late in the day we had to develop a new system, 3D printing the jigs and fixtures meant we were able to have a totally new and compliant system within days.”
The Strakka racecar can be seen at the entrance of TCT Show + Personalize over the course of the next two days and the team will be hanging out on the Stratasys booth should you have any pressing questions.
