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Product category: Rapid Prototyping
News Release from: EOS Electro Optical Systems (UK) | Subject: Laser-sintering machines
Edited by the Engineeringtalk Editorial Team on 01 November 2005

Laser-sintering success at Jaguar

Jaguar's Whitley Engineering Centre is reducing development time with laser-sintering rapid prototyping - and producing stronger, more widely-applicable parts

Imagine the V8 air intake manifold prototype for a forthcoming Jaguar car Hard tooling for its manufacture would traditionally have cost hundreds of thousands of pounds, with thousands of pounds each time just to alter the tool following every design change - not to mention the several weeks needed each time

Major changes might even require a completely new tool.

Recently, however, two design iterations of the manifold were produced and 17 subsequently built in nylon for less than a thousand pounds each and with just a lead-time of one and a half days per manifold.

This was achieved with laser-sintering RP technology, which gave a major cost saving in the development of this vehicle component alone and has halved the time needed finalise it to just six months.

But rapid prototyping techniques using materials like epoxy resin and ABS produce fairly fragile parts probably best suited to visualisation.

Jaguar has been using laser-sintering equipment from EOS, Warwick, which creates prototype trim and even engine parts from polyamide PA2200 nylon powder by fusing into shape layer by layer.

Resulting parts such as the air intake manifold, door inners, fascia substrate, interior air vents and exterior light housings, are tough enough for test vehicles, enabling more data to be gathered early on in development.

Jaguar's Whitley Engineering Centre Rapid Prototyping department takes the form of STL files from a number of sources within the group - primarily the design, aerodynamics, body, chassis, electrical, power train and engineering departments within Aston Martin and Land Rover, in addition to Jaguar.

The Engineering Centre started using RP in 1997 to build parts in layers using STL files extracted from CAD models.

Now it operates as a profit centre within the Premier Automotive Group.

At the start, it made small models of complete vehicle exteriors for visualisation and detailed scale models of structural parts for wind tunnel tests.

By 2000 it became clear that an RP technique was needed which enabled robust parts to be created which could withstand the rigours of functional testing, and that's laser-sintering comes in.

Jaguar installed two EOSINT P360 machines, which were eventually upgraded to P380 performance with software and hardware that gives an even better component finish and up to 30% faster build times.

One of the first jobs on the machines, a door assembly model for the XJ saloon, was used as a robust development aid around which the shape of the protective security shield for the car door could be developed ahead of production parts.

The model stood up well to the task, in conditions where a similar part made with stereolithography might have been too brittle.

The next laser-sintered component for the same vehicle was a bumper section built in two pieces, used for visualisation of the assembly of key parts such as the exhaust pipe and tow eye fixing before progressing to hard tooling.

The EOSINT P380s currently operate 24/7 at Whitley, producing within its 340 x 340 x 620mm build envelope a range of parts, with the STL files managed in a database with scheduling capability.

Parts are positioned using Materialise's Magics software to give optimum use of the build volume.

The nesting flexibility afforded by the EOSINT P380s makes it easy to incorporate dozens of parts in each sintering cycle.

In fact, Jaguar says that because the entire build volume can be filled with parts, the laser-sintered part throughput exceeds other RP processes.

With the other processes it operates, parts can only be fitted within the area of the build platform.

An interesting part often found in the machine's mix is not a prototype at all, but a complex plastic assembly aid for operators working on the new XK coupe and convertible.

This helps position the window lift mechanisms during a build.

Some 3000 of these were required by manufacturing because they remain on the vehicle throughout the build process, and by August 2005, around half of the parts required had been produced on the P380s as fill-in jobs, without the need to invest in expensive plastic injection mould tooling! Jaguar expects to see rapid prototyping rapidly developing into rapid manufacturing, starting with niche requirements.

But these RP processes may point towards the next generation of volume production technologies which do not have the design constraints, tooling and inventory overheads we see today.

Jaguar will certainly continue to produce plastic components for both prototype and niche applications, such as the window lift assembly aid, following the success of the XK window tool project.

(Updated by CR, May 2007).

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