Yearly, requirements group SAE Worldwide holds a contest known as Method SAE, wherein college students from each undergraduate and graduate packages design, construct, and race small formula-style race vehicles. For this yr’s occasion, the College of Southern California’s (USC) Method 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 standard manufacturing processes:
“The exhaust collector is the half that joins every cylinder’s exhaust into one stream and it straight impacts engine effectivity and efficiency. …There are often two essential design issues: efficiency versus manufacturing issue,” McCarthy famous. “Optimum efficiency requires optimized angles of the tubes the place the exhaust circulation meets, a sure preliminary contact of circulation.
“Manufacturing the best exhaust collector with these most popular angles is usually not doable with conventional strategies, similar to welding, and there’s at all times a trade-off between [performance and manufacturing difficulty]. Through the use of AM, particularly Wayland’s NeuBeam course of, we’ve been in a position to reduce 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 happened on the finish of June. The collaborators then labored collectively remotely to design and print the ultimate half.
With the Method 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 beneath a yr — an particularly spectacular feat contemplating it’s a part with none in depth 3D printing observe file, no less than by way of publicly obtainable info.
In line with McCarthy, the success of the ultimate half relied on the precise benefits of EBAM, particularly the decrease residual stresses on the half, compared with powder mattress fusion (PBF): “The warmth cycles seen and excessive vibratory setting may 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 %, and helped USC Racing win third place in the autocross occasion at Method SAE. The USC automobile additionally completed an endurance problem that almost all of groups in 2024 weren’t in a position to full, which was a key purpose for USC Racing.
Other than the engineering achievements and efficiency milestones on show right here, it’s noteworthy that this mission was solely made doable on account of the supply of a digitally-based manufacturing expertise and AM’s accelerated iteration cycle. It is usually important that, because of a gathering at a commerce present, an undergraduate engineering pupil was in a position to entry a extremely area of interest, comparatively costly expertise.
All of these little particulars have been required to be introduced into concord so as 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 doable lengthy sufficient to develop their imaginations, till creativeness breaks by way of into actuality. It permits engineers-in-training engaged on pupil tasks to collaborate with small companies midway the world over to out-design standard mass trade.
Photos courtesy of Wayland Additive
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