Introduction
According to Dundon Motorsports’ Jamie Bopp, “The nature of the car has been about freedom, about emotional release, about joy, so Dundon is in the business of taking joyful cars and making them more joyful.”
Dundon Motorsports (“Dundon”) goes beyond the concept of a car as a mode of transportation and instead focuses on the emotionally satisfying elements that elate and move their customers. In their early days as a company, Dundon manufactured exhausts and worked on suspensions and engines of Porsche GT automobiles, making the vehicles more appropriate for use on a racetrack.
Today, Dundon supports gran tourer (GT) car customers with exhaust tuning, intake tuning, suspension tuning, brakes, and more. One of their more recent ventures involves Porsche “cup” cars (or ready-todrive racecars) as well as other cars such as the GT3 R and RSR.
- Industry: Mobility and transportation
- Sector: Automobiles
- Objective: To decrease production times and enhance part performance for Porsche GT racecars.
- Approach: With the HP Jet Fusion 5200 Series 3D Printing Solution, Dundon Motorsports has been able to accelerate production, experiment with new designs, grow their product portfolio, and expand to new markets.
- Technology | Solution: HP Multi Jet Fusion technology
HP Jet Fusion 5200 Series 3D Printing Solution
- Material: HP 3D High Reusability1 (HR) PA 12
Challenge
One of Dundon Motorsports’ recent projects involved improving the performance and horsepower of the engine in ready-to-drive racecars and making sure that the necessary elements fit within the confines of the air conditioner, the power steering pump, and the hood, among other parts.
“Finding an innovative way to make all of these parts fit is one thing,” said Bopp. “The second thing is the business side of the situation. If we were able to injection mold or CNC machine these parts, the costs would be stratospheric.”
Bopp referred to a previous price quote of nearly $65,000 for an intake runner mold, a price that would put a huge dent in the budget of a small company with a small production volume.
An intake manifold for the Porsche GT4 takes a solid mass of air and distributes it evenly throughout the six-cylinder engine—called a “flat engine” in Porsche lingo. Because the cylinders need to be hollow and thin, Dundon faced challenges in machining this part as the tooling required for CNC machining is difficult to control due to the long reach of the tool and the vibration on the tool bit, and aluminum isn’t an ideal material for an intake because it transfers heat to the intake air very easily. Additionally, because Dundon didn’t need to produce high volumes of parts, they couldn’t justify the large investment in molds for injection molding.
Instead, they looked to alternative manufacturing methods, like 3D printing.
To read full download the whitepaper:
Dundon Motorsports fast-tracks production of auto racing parts with HP Jet Fusion 3D Printing Solutions
