When Albins Performance Transmissions was asked by Thales Bendigo to deliver a prototype steering pump bracket for the Hawkei within one week, it turned to CSIRO and 3D printing for a solution.
Based in Ballarat, Albins is a key supplier for the Hawkei, a light protected mobility vehicle being designed and developed in Australia by Thales. When Thales Bendigo requested the prototype bracket, one option was to machine it. However, this would not have been representative of the cast production design – it would have created a different grain structure and material properties to a cast part. Significant quantities of waste material would also have been produced.
Albins asked CSIRO to make a casting mould within two days. Working from a digital file of the bracket, CSIRO manufactured the mould over a weekend using its Voxel Jet VX1000 3D sand printer. The bracket was then cast using the mould, within the one-week deadline. Importantly, the part delivered had the same grain structure and material properties as the production design. Thales and Albins were pleased with both the product’s quality and the fast turnaround time.
“This was a brilliant way to shortcut the prototype process and produce a low-volume prototype with the exact properties of a production part,” said Albins CEO Steve MacDonald. “To produce a part for validation testing using conventional methods would have cost several times more in tooling costs with a significant impact on the timeline of the project. To get a set of moulds produced so quickly was simply amazing! This has changed the way we think of new projects completely”.
Alex Henderson, Mechanical Engineer at Thales, added: “To receive a production intent component in this timeframe has allowed us to fast-track validating the design. We are now looking at using the technology for developing other Hawkei components.”
The Voxeljet 3D sand printer is located in CSIRO’s Lab 22 Innovation Centre. Accelerating the adoption 3D printing or additive manufacturing technologies is Lab 22’s primary aim, providing Australian companies easy access to some of the most advanced additive manufacturing equipment available.
“This is typical of the jobs we are asked to do on the Voxeljet,” said Gary Savage, Principal Research Scientist and Voxeljet machine lead. ”The Voxeljet enables companies to save both time and money by avoiding the need to make a pattern. As such, it is ideal for making prototype parts, for jobs requiring fast turnaround and for short production runs.”