World premiere: Bugatti designs brake caliper from 3-D printer

By CARSIFU | 23 January 2018


WOLFSBURG: For the first time, the Bugatti developers have succeeded in designing a brake caliper that can be produced by 3-D printing.

It is also the world’s largest functional component produced from titanium using 3-D printing processes.

While the main material used for the additive production of vehicle components to date has been aluminium, the new brake caliper is made from titanium.

This new milestone in the development of 3-D printing was reached in cooperation with Laser Zentrum Nord of Hamburg.

With this world debut, Bugatti has underlined its lighthouse function for 3-D printing within the Volkswagen Group.

Vehicle trials for the use of the 3-D titanium brake caliper in series production are to start in the first half of the year.

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This particular titanium alloy, is mainly used in the aerospace industry; for example, for highly stressed undercarriage and wing components or in aircraft and rocket engines.

The material offers considerably higher performance than aluminium.

In comparison with the aluminium component currently used, Bugatti can reduce the weight of the brake caliper by about 40% and at the same time, ensuring even higher strength by using the new part.

To date, this approach was not feasible because it is extremely difficult or even impossible to mill or forge components from a titanium block as is normal practice with aluminium due to the extremely high strength of the material.

This problem has now been solved using an extremely high-performance 3-D printer.

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