RE: World's first 3-D printed titanium brake caliper

[CoolHands]

Is this chap the definition of smug

[Flibble]

Fury1630 said:

As is often the case with these PR lead announcements, & as an aircraft / spacecraft designer - I don't understand some things.

I don't understand why titanium is better for a calliper than alloy - apart from the bling factor. Aluminium alloy is lighter & conducts heat at least as well. In a calliper, bulk is a good thing as it conducts heat away from the pads, but mass is a bad thing as it's unsprung, so why on earth would you not use the lightest suitable material?

I suspect it's marketing driven, but a couple of factors that might influence Ti vs Al alloys:
Heat resistance is much higher in Ti, granted calipers shouldn't be getting hot enough to melt in general, but with carbon ceramic brakes they might.
Fatigue may be an issue in an Al component that can be designed around in Ti due to having a fatigue limit.

[sideways sid]

Max_Torque said:

Useful. Not!

VAG alone last year made just over 10.3 MILLION cars, each with four brake calipers. So that's a brake caliper off the production line every 0.786 seconds. A 3d printed caliper that takes a multi-million Euro machine several days to make is pointless.


I had a similar conversation recently with a company who is 3d printing heat exchangers (radiators). They said "our heat exchangers are 40% more efficient than the best conventional heat exchanger supplied by any Tier1 supplier today" To which i said "terrific, can i have 1 million of them by the end of the month?" and they said "er, no, they take 8 hours to print". They seemed to be unable to grasp the simple fact that this problem made there "solution" however technically amazing it might be, completely irrelevant......

You have missed the point. Nobody is suggesting that 3d printing is a replacement for volume production.

To put it another way using your example, how long did it take for VAG to design, prototype, iterate, and sign-off calipers for production, then design and build the tooling and logistics to manufacture 40 million of them? ...probably longer than it took to build this one.

[TooMany2cvs]

CoolHands said:

Is this chap the definition of smug

He's got the world's most expensive brake caliper on his desk. Why wouldn't he be?

[MiggyA]

Looks like an AI assisted design.

[Huskyman]

Looks like the AP Radi-CAL design to me. Didn’t they supply the brakes for the Veyron?

[Peanus]

Mercury00 said:

What's the thinking behind this? 45 hours per part, why not just make a mould and pour in liquid titanium to make it far quicker?

Because by making really expensive stuff like this economies of scale happens and it gets cheaper to do.

Back in the day only expensive stuff had turbos. Now everything has turbos.

[AER]

Tango13 said:

Article said:

Titanium would, of course, be preferable, but utilising the metal has to date been impractical, due to the difficulty of milling or forging components from the aircraft grade material.

But working with the German Laser Zentrum Nord, Bugatti's engineers have apparently found a 21st century solution to the problem. They've designed what is both the first 3-D printed brake caliper and the world's largest functional 3-D printed titanium component...

Bugatti need to buy some newer machines and invest in some more up to date tooling if they are genuinely struggling to mill a bit of Titanium

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g-aKpXvhtKI

Titanium is not impossible to mill but it is expensive and difficult compared to other materials. It costs loads in tooling and machine time and the toolpathing must be top notch to maximise the already short tool life - basically all-round expensive to do and a lot of people would "genuinely struggle to mill a bit of Titanium"

[BVB]

Nice. Ferrari F1 team have been 3D printing their pistons (from steel) this year. The FIA demands a minimum piston weight of 300 grams, hence steel was the option. To add, steel is more durable than titanium also.

[LotusOmega375D]

I hope they prove reliable, otherwise Hr Vettel will be bleeping into his microphone all season!

Is this something which their sponsor Mahle is doing for them?

[FourWheelDrift]

CoolHands said:

Is this chap the definition of smug

Same face.

[CraigyMc]

BVB said:

Nice. Ferrari F1 team have been 3D printing their pistons (from steel) this year. The FIA demands a minimum piston weight of 300 grams, hence steel was the option. To add, steel is more durable than titanium also.

Titanium pistons are banned anyway, as are titanium alloys.

See rule 5.17.1 of the technical regs:
5.17.1 Pistons must respect Article 5.16. Titanium alloys are not permitted.

[delta0]

LotusOmega375D said:

Also if I were VAG I would be looking at wire-fed 3D printing (additive manufacturing) in the long-term. It's much less wasteful than the powder method mentioned here, of which the vast majority just gets binned. The only waste with wire is from final machining.

For automotive applications 100% powder recycling is used. I.e. the powder is passed through a filter and then back into the machines.