MANUFACTURING
❱❱ Wind tunnel trials using 3D printed components brought hillclimb record- breaking success for the electric VW ID R
NO UPHILL STRUGGLE Volkswagen has also been using new manufacturing techniques to break records on the track this year with the “Race to the Clouds” Pikes Peak hill climb being achieved in an all-time record breaking time of just under 8 minutes (7:57.148) in an electric Volkswagen ID R car. This was also the first time the 92-year-old record had ever been broken using electric propulsion. Just three weeks later, Romain Dumas again piloted his ID R
to a new record of 43.86s at the Goodwood Festival of Speed hillclimb event. The double success of the 500kW electric racing car is seen by
VW’s chairman, Dr Herbert Diess, as good preparation for the company’s major electric car offensive, which it plans to start next year with the ID range at its core. Racing is never easy and VW’s route to success at Pikes Peak
and Goodwood began just eight months before and is seen by the VW board as being down to the innovative methods used during the test and development phase.
3D PRINTING According to Dr Benjamin Ahrenholz, head of calculations/simulations at Volkswagen Motorsport, aerodynamics experts tested several hundred configurations in the wind tunnel for the chassis details, which couldn’t have been done without the speed and flexibility of 3D printing. “We made about 2,000 individual parts for the wind tunnel
model in the 3D printer, sometimes with several printers working at the same time,” he explains. Ahrenholz added that with conventional manufacturing, such
as with carbon fibre, the process would have taken several days or weeks for each part, time that the engineers simply did not have. The suite of 3D printers certainly worked hard as the spectrum
of parts ranged from a bracket just a few centimetres in size for a sensor to complex channels supplying batteries and brakes with cool air. Once the scale model 3D printed components had been made
for low load wind tunnel evaluation, the parts selected for the final build were then made of carbon-fibre composite or metal for the racing car. Notwithstanding the soft material used in the 3D printers,
some parts were nonetheless used in the racing car. These were exclusively small parts, their shape being very complicated to manufacture by casting or laminating and the dimensions of which did not have to adhere to extremely tight tolerances.
12 /// Environmental Engineering /// September 2018
INDUSTRY 4.0 IN WOLFSBURG Race track records aren’t the only successes being celebrated at Volkswagen this year, as the company has also just picked up a Lean Production Award for Industry 4.0 implementation among other achievements at its German Wolfsburg plant. Home to the company’s headquarters, the Wolfsburg factory
produces 3,500 cars a day, including the Golf, Tiguan and Touran. Since Wolfsburg started production in 1945, more than 45 million vehicles have rolled off the production lines. In the future, the site will consolidate production of the Golf family from the next generation onwards and the new Seat Tarraco will also be produced there from the end of 2018. According to Volkswagen’s board member in charge of
production, Dr Andreas Tostmann, his staff is implementing the changes required for greater productivity and high quality with many initiatives and with exemplary speed. “We need this approach more than ever before to safeguard the future of the plant,” he says. Chairman of the award assessment jury and MD of Agamus
Consult, Dr Werner Geiger says the consistent pursuit of high productivity and zero reworking contributed to the choice of Wolfsburg as winner of the award. “The speed with which the team at the plant has introduced
many excellent approaches over the past 24 months with a view to becoming fit through lean production is impressive. We are therefore very pleased to present the Automotive Lean Production Award 2018 in the OEM category to the Wolfsburg plant for this outstanding achievement,” he says. With its product quality management (PQM) strategy,
Volkswagen’s main plant is focusing on productivity, quality and team performance. The objective is more and more efficient volume production, which safeguards the plant and its future. With the 400 or so workshops to be held this year alone, managers and team members are improving processes within the production system, thus reducing the production cost per vehicle at the same time as consistently maintaining the highest possible quality standards. Industry 4.0 implementation is also an important part of the
future improvements at Wolfsburg and reflects the emphasis that is being placed on increasing connectivity, performance monitoring and intelligent edge devices within the context of an overall Industry 4.0 approach. With Bosch being the main driving force behind Industry 4.0, there is particularly strong uptake within the German automotive industry. EE
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