Bugatti Develops 3D-printed Titanium Brake Caliper

By Henny Hemmes
Senior European Editor
The Auto Channel

The Hague, January 22, 2018. The first 3D-printed titanium component in the car industry is a fact. Bugatti gets the honor of being the world’s first to have developed one, a titanium alloy brake caliper.

When the first 3D-printers were introduced, I was intrigued and excited. I would have liked to get one as soon as they became affordable: wouldn’t it be nice to make some jewelry or so? Soon after, I forgot about buying such an expensive apparatus just for fun, but kept an eye on the developments and the products that were created by 3D-printing.

Manufacturers changed to this new production process, because it allows rapid prototyping and manufacturing. It also has opens doors for newer designs, lighter and safer products, as well as shorter lead times and lower cost. In 2014, a report from Deloittte showed that the four largest car manufacturers accounted for one-third of 3D- manufacturing industry’s revenue in 2013. It was predicted that 3D-printing in the automotive industry will be worth $1.1 billion a year by 2019.

So far, manufacturers used aluminum for 3D-printing, but Bugatti is the first to use titanium for its new eight-piston monobloc brake caliper, which also is the world’s largest functional component. Moreover, the use of titanium is complex and the challenging process is the result of cooperation between the Development Department of the French super car brand and Laser Zentrum Nord in Hamburg. The Laser Zentrum has the largest printer in the world.

The 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 aluminum. For example, even as a 3-D printed component, it has a tensile strength of 1,250 N/mm2. This means that a force of slightly more than 125 kg be applied to a square millimeter of this titanium alloy without the material rupturing. The new titanium brake caliper, which is 41 cm long, 21 cm wide and 13.6 cm high, weighs only 2.9 kg. In comparison with the aluminum component currently used, which weighs 4.9 kg, Bugatti could therefore reduce the weight of the brake caliper by about 40 per cent at the same time as ensuring even higher strength by using the new part.

Bugatti, that can be seen as the technical development laboratory of the Volkswagen Group, has a history of coming up with innovations and leads the way in 3-D printing.

Bugatti plans to hold the first trials for use in production vehicles in the first half of the year. Then, it will be possible to considerably shorten production times, especially for machining.

The 3-D-printed titanium brake caliper is only one example of Bugatti’s current research and development work. They have also the longest aluminum component to date made by 3-D printing, a 63-centimetre-long lightweight aluminum windscreen wiper board. The board only weighs 0.4 kg, half the weight of a conventional die-cast lightweight aluminum board, without any reduction in rigidity

We can expect Bugatti’s experience will be used in research and development projects of the Volkswagen Group and its brands.