Nelson and his team have been developing the use of 3D printed parts in their engines for several years, and although successful in testing, had a lot of trouble getting them to a point of being “production ready.”
“Very early on, I identified some serious benefits of using 3D printing. The material properties of some of the high-end polymers are seriously impressive and perfect for things like our intake manifolds and induction parts.” Being designers and engineers, they have found novel ways of using printed parts alongside billet parts and carbon composite parts in what Nelson refers to as a “hybrid manufacturing method.” While the COVID pandemic had an effect on their in-house production, one job on the list of Hartley Engines and Motorsport was to redesign the throttle bodies that were used on their intakes. The individual throttle bodies are a billet aluminum part, machined in-house, but the secret to their intakes are the 3D printed intake runners and trumpets.
“The material we are using for our intake runners is a high-temperature nylon (PA), with 25% carbon fiber… The way PA-CF deals with temperature outperforms aluminum, it transfers heat very slowly, keeping our intake path very cool, aiding combustion once the cool air gets into the engine.”
“The added bonus of 3D printing our runners and trumpets is the design flexibility. We take the intake shape very seriously. It is not simply just a round hole machined into a piece of plate. We can 3D print extremely intricate curves and shapes that line up with the CAD models of our cylinder heads.” Before receiving their first INTAMSYS FUNMAT HT, Hartley Engines’ success rate of printing high-temperature polymers was about 15-20%.
“We were wasting more prints than we could afford, and when some of the plastics cost upwards of $500/kg (plus freight to NZ), it was getting to the point of not being viable to print the parts. I knew it could be successful, but we just couldn’t get it to work every time.”“Since we took delivery of our first INTAMSYS FUNMAT HT, we have had a 95% success rate with our prints… I had a lot of people in the industry tell me that there was no way we could make production parts on a 3D printer, but the INTAMSYS has proven that wrong!”
%20discusses%20design%20ideas%20in%20the%20FUNMAT%20HT%20workshop.png?width=1200&height=665&name=Nelson%20Hartley%20(Right)%20discusses%20design%20ideas%20in%20the%20FUNMAT%20HT%20workshop.png "Nelson Hartley (Right) discusses design ideas in the FUNMAT HT workshop")
