Volkswagen puts faith in EOS sintered nylon for 2005 SEMA show.

Anyone who’s anyone in the automotive and specialty equipment industry no doubt has the annual Las Vegas SEMA show written into their calendars, well in advance of the November deadline, most likely in big red marker.  It’s where the best in the industry come together to show off what’s new from R&D, and what to expect in the coming years.  The Specialty Equipment Market Association’s annual show is literally the premier automotive specialty products trade event in the world.

This fall, the design team at Volkswagen of North America in Simi Valley, California had a tough task.  Not only did they need to design several custom components for Volkswagen’s hot new Jetta®, Passat®, and Toureg® concept vehicles that were to be tested and displayed at SEMA 2005, but they needed the parts fast, and in a material that could withstand the rigors of not only the exhibit itself, but also the time trials on the track outside.

 “We needed parts that could handle a vehicle that goes 100mph.”  remarked Adam Gourley, Rapid Prototype Manager at Volkswagen, “These parts needed to be accurate, but it would have been impossible to machine most of them.  And I knew SLA’s wouldn’t work, I’ve got two SLA machines and would have run the parts myself if so.  So after some research, and hearing about the potential for EOS’ new nylon sintering capabilities, we decided to put our faith in that new technology and turn to Protogenic.”

Over the course of about 3 weeks, Protogenic built several parts including grills, grill scoops, logos, air intakes, kick panels, even an iPod® holder for the new Passat® and Toureg®.  The parts shipped to Volkswagen, where they were finished and painted, then mounted to the cars.  “Finishing the parts was tough…” Adam noted, “…wow that material is really strong.  But after a few rounds of sand, primer, sand, primer, they actually cleaned up really well.”

And you can see the results for yourself.  The image above shows one half of the LS nylon part, straight out of the EOS machine after some light bead blasting.  By the time it was on the car it looked quite a bit different, as shown in the photo to the right.

''The most important thing is the parts worked.'' recalled Gourley, ''those parts went around the track at over 100 miles per hour and they held up totally fine.  We will definitely consider using direct sintered nylon parts for more applications in the future. This was a total success.''