AUTOMOTIVE PROTOTYPING: FOAM+CLAY MODELS

Exploratory design stage in the automobile industry involves using of a huge block of foam and overlaying it with clay for milling, followed by manual post-processing. This giant block of foam is expensive to produce and ship and relying on subtractive manufacturing leads to huge amounts of waste. Recyclable thermoplastics open the door to reuse the milled material for printing again. Moreover, can this conventional workflow be improved by hybrid manufacturing which offers lower wastage and costs?!

With the advent of an integrated hybrid-manufacturing system, a master-mold can be used to print the outline of the body, without using up material in the bulk of the prototype. This base shape can be invariant of the final design and can be used indefinitely. The overlaying print parameters change with each subsequent design iteration. However, this flexibility can only be attained by still relying on the milling to produce finer details. Production time is more due to the added printing time but the milling time is reduced as horizontal roughing isn’t needed in the case of hybrid-manufacturing. The development of a system for this requires a deep integration of the additive-manufacturing extruder as well as the milling spindle. Any deviations between the digital model and/or calibration between the two end effectors can lead to inaccuracies. A fully dedicated system thus could be the answer to the often tedious procedure that involves specialized personnel rather than just people with skills in machining. Moreover, recyclable materials could be integrated into the workflow.