F E AT U R E
3D sand printing allows engineers to quickly create a series
of evolving testable pieces with slight variations to develop
the absolute best, most fuel-effcient vehicle for mass
production.
He says the prototypes for parts on Ford's
EcoBoost engines were made this way, including
"all of the original cylinder heads for the 2-liter
EcoBoost that you can get on so many vehicles
today." In fact, "the frst 100 engines and their
cylinder heads were cast using this technology."
Before and After
A cylinder head is a diffcult part to make, requiring 12 to 20 cores and mold components to be
sand-cast. Before using 3D sand printing for
metal castings, the process for making a cylinder head involved making patterns, usually by
machining them from tooling board, and packing
foundry sand in the mold.
Creating all of the tooling would take months
and a lot of money. Plus, "Some of these cores
are extremely tough to make," Susalla says.
"Now when using 3D printing, it's just a mat12— AM Supplement
ter of getting a fle and putting it through the
machine and coming out with the same cores,"
he says. "There is no tooling, no time involved."
3D Sand Printing Benefits
The most important beneft of 3D sand printing is the speed of the process. "In a nutshell,
if you look at the traditional way of making a
casting, you are months out before you get your
frst casting, and with 3D sand printing you can
have a casting in a matter of days to a couple of
weeks," Susalla says.
He explains that, if you are using tooling, it
might be four months down the road before you
get your frst part and realize that it's not what
you want. Then the tooling must be changed. "If
you look at the product development cycle, Ford,
GM and Chrysler only give you x number of
months to years to put it on paper and then get it