Why Bugatti, Czinger, and Other Marques Are 3-D Printing Their Hypercars
24th November 2024
From the outside, Bugatti’s new 1,800 hp Tourbillon looks much the same as the outgoing Chiron. Longer, sure, with a more pronounced nose and aggressive fender flares, but not substantially different. Look closer at the suspension, though, and you’ll notice something radical: The control arms and linkages, rather than appearing like typical automotive parts, have a distinctly organic shape—like the skeletal structure of some otherworldly creature built for speed. These key components in the $4 million model were created using bleeding-edge additive manufacturing, more commonly known as 3-D printing.
The technology, which enables pieces to be made directly from raw materials without the use of extensive stamping or tooling machinery, dates to the 1980s, yet only in the past few years has it become sophisticated enough for applications as extreme as the underpinnings for an 1,800 hp hypercar. While there are many different processes, the automotive industry’s commonly adopted approach has become powder-bed fusion using a laser beam (PBF-LB). As the name suggests, a high-power laser is cast onto a bed of powdered metal, fusing the particulate into a solid, with the piece being formed as metallic powder is repeatedly applied and then melted, layer by layer. The resulting components often feature wild—and wildly efficient—shapes that would be impractical or even impossible to achieve via other methods.