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Porsche Creating Partially 3D Printed Seats that Offer Different Levels of Comfort

3D printing is used often in the automotive sector, and many recognizable names, from Volkswagen and BMW to Ford and Toyota, are adopting the technology. German automobile manufacturer Porsche, which specializes in high-performance sports cars, SUVs, and sedans, has turned to 3D printing multiple times in the past to make components for e-drive powertrains and turbo inlet ducts. Now, the company has revealed its latest innovation – 3D printed bodyform bucket seats.

Michael Steiner, a member of the executive board for research and development at Porsche, said, “With the ‘3D-printed bodyform full-bucket seat’, we’re once again giving series-production customers the opportunity to experience technology carried over from motor sports.”

The manufacturer, based in Stuttgart, currently considers the seat a concept study, and not yet a production part. The seat’s central section is partially 3D printed, because the technology will allow Porsche to offer customers an exceptional level of customization – people who order the seat in the future will be able to choose between soft, medium, and hard firmness levels. The central section of the seat will then be custom 3D printed to provide whichever level of comfort they choose.

“The seat is the interface between the human and the vehicle, and is thus important for precise, sporty handling. That’s why personalised seat shells customised for the driver have been standard in race cars for a long time now,” Steiner said.

In the future, the manufacturer plans to bring the 3D printed seats to customers as production parts through Porsche Tequipment. But for now, only 40 of these seats, for the driver only, will be made and installed in the 911s and 718s Porsche racing models; in fact, the new 3D printed bucket seat is based on the company’s current sports seat. These 40 seats will be considered as prototypes, and will only be used on European racetracks this summer with a six-point harness.

Once Porsche receives feedback from the customers, the 3D printed seat will then be included as a regular offering in its Porsche Manufaktur catalogue starting in mid-2021 – if the feedback is good, of course. At that point, Porsche will also offer the seat in a variety of different colors as well.

The base support for the bucket seat is made out of expanded polypropylene (EPP), which is then bonded to the 3D printable, breathable custom comfort layer, featuring an aesthetically pleasing lattice structure. The seat’s final layer is made from a material that Porsche calls Racetex, which has a distinguishing perforation pattern that helps with climate control.

Porsche hopes that in the long run, it will be able to use 3D printing to offer its customers even more customization, such as seats that are designed and molded for a person’s specific body contour and shape, similar to how vehicle seats in motorsports are made for the race car driver.

There isn’t yet a price listed for these customizable 3D printed Porsche seats, but you can bet your bottom dollar that they won’t be cheap; customization rarely is, of course.

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(Sources: Autoblog and MSN / Images: Porsche)

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Results of Daimler and BMW AutoAdd Project Show that 3D Printing for Mass Production in Automotive Industry is Possible

[Image: Fraunhofer ILT]

Within the framework of the “Photonic Process Chains” funding initiative by the German Federal Ministry of Education and Research (BMBF), several partners – two research institutes and five companies, to be exact – are focusing on 3D printing in the automotive industry. The “Integration of Additive Manufacturing Processes in Automobile Series Production – AutoAdd” research project is coordinated by Daimler AG, and its findings show that by holistically integrating the metallic laser powder bed fusion process (LPBF), also known as SLM and DMLS, developed at the Fraunhofer Institute for Laser Technology (ILT) into automotive series production, unit costs can go way down.

The BMBF has been working on several projects in order to promote the intelligent linking of photon-based manufacturing processes, like metal 3D printing, as a means to produce complex or individualized products. Its aim is to create flexible, conceptual hybrid manufacturing designs, which can then be used for production purposes. But, out of all 14 joint projects in the funding initiative, which began in 2015 and ended in May, AutoAdd should make it easier to use 3D printing in the automotive industry within just three years.

In addition to Fraunhofer ILT and Daimler, the AutoAdd project partners include:

  • BMW
  • GKN Sinter Metals Engineering GmbH
  • Karlsruhe Institute of Technology (KIT)
  • Netfabb GmbH
  • TRUMPF Laser- und Systemtechnik GmbH

[Image: TRUMPF]

These partners are working to lower unit costs by integrating the LPBF process chain into the automotive mass production environment, in order to develop a new hybrid process chain. Daimler and the BMW Group worked together to define the necessary requirements for the new additive process chain, and then Fraunhofer ILT and TRUMPF used the chain to create a variety of plant and finishing conceptual designs for 3D printing.

In addition to a modular system architecture that allows for the use of an “interchangeable cylinder principle” and multiple beam sources, potentially production-ready optical designs were created. The AutoAdd partners also analyzed GKN’s novel scalable materials, as well as created some promising post-processing concepts that could be automated, such as support structure removal.

KIT was the partner which ended up evaluating these new factory designs.

According to a Fraunhofer ILT press release, “Using a simulation model, the engineers of the wbk Institute for Production Science visualized an exemplary, conventional process chain, in which they were able to design various possible LPBF plant concepts. With methods such as cost or benchmark analyzes, they were able to compare the new approaches from a technical and economic point of view with previous ones.”

Long-term recording of the contour exposure during 3D printing of a grinding wheel. [Image: MTU Aero Engines AG]

There were several positive effects stemming from the €3.37 million project, at least in terms of academics. There was enough useful content from AutoAdd to fuel four separate dissertations, and this knowledge can also be used for lectures in the future. Next year, a new project, partially based on the AutoAdd results, will launch that’s focused on line-integration of 3D printing to “implement the designed additive process chain.”

The joint project results are interesting and impressive, showing that it is indeed possible to achieve additive mass manufacturing. For instance, the whole process chain can be automated, making it more efficient and cost-effective, as the team discovered that modular cylinders and wet-chemical immersion baths are effective ways to remove, batchwise, components during post-processing. In addition, common metrics for evaluating LPBF manufacturing equipment were developed by the AutoAdd project partners, which can be used to identify popular equipment manufacturers for a large-scale benchmarking exercise.

“By using standardized benchmark jobs with different test specimens, industrial users can now calculate transferable key figures with which they will be able to find the most economical system for their purposes,” the press release noted.

One of the most, if not the most, important points the AutoAdd team needed in order to make 3D printing ready for series production was the ability to reproduce mechanical properties. The partners took an important fundamental step by demonstrating and evaluating this feature in multiple facilities – showing that it is possible to integrate an economic additive process chain in automotive mass production.

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