With the deflation of the consumer 3D printing bubble, many previously consumer-focused brands are shifting focus to the industrial market. This includes prosumer-popular Ultimaker, which recently showed off the uses of its desktop extrusion systems for industrial prototyping at the Additive Manufacturing (AM) Europe 2016 show.
At the event, the Dutch printer brand was there with its customer, Eventuri, a manufacturer of aftermarket auto intake systems that uses Ultimaker 3D printers to prototype its products before going into production. Unhappy with existing air intake systems, auto enthusiasts at Eventuri began developing aftermarket parts for such brands as Honda, Jaguar, BMW and more. On display at AM Europe was a system for the Audi RS5/RS.
With three Ultimaker printers in house, Eventuri 3D prints design prototypes for these intake setups, consistently reiterating and ultimately determining the form and fit before creating a functional copy of the part from engineering-grade materials, like carbon fiber. With the Audi RS5/RS intake in particular, the Eventuri team altered the inlet track that connects the air filters and inlet tubes to the air ducts. Additionally, the air boxes and duct feed were replaced for more efficient airflow. As a result, the company claims to have improved the car’s performance by 15 to 20 horsepower.
In an interview with All3DP, Bilal Mahmood, from Eventuri’s engineering and development team, said, “Ultimaker’s 3D printers are invaluable tools in our design and development process as their speed and reliability allow us to iterate our designs with confidence and reduce our time to market significantly.”
Mahmood added, “I chose Ultimaker because at the time it had one of the biggest build volumes and had very good reviews. The fact that we were not tied down to using a specific brand of filament was a big plus. We continued to use Ultimaker and buy more of them as they had proved their reliability and accuracy over the three to four years of use in printing our prototypes.”
Interestingly, as industrial 3D printers are used more frequently for end-part production, machines that were previously marketed for consumers and producers may be increasingly leveraged for the rapid prototyping purposes for which 3D printing was originally invented.