Mass customization of a 3D printed electric vehicle

In the automotive industry, additive manufacturing has historically been used to create functional prototypes. Over the years, the automotive sector started leveraging the benefits of 3D printing technologies for end-use part applications too, to produce complex parts, or to allow greater customization at the design level for example. A recent project which showcases some of the possibilities of AM in automotive is Project Chameleon. This is a 3D printed electric vehicle project initiated in the UK by Scaled, a company specialized in material extrusion large format 3D printing using robotics.

Behind Project Chameleon lies “the opportunity to own a vehicle, designed from the ground up to be ideally suited to a particular environment. True mass customisation. Sustainable. Affordable. Aesthetic,” you can read on the Scaled website. In fact, this project explores various applications of 3D printing, including optimizing structural design thanks to DfAM (Design for Additive Manufacturing) techniques to produce higher performance parts, in conjunction with delivering a more sustainable, affordable and aesthetically pleasing product.

The 3D printed electric vehicle chassis was optimized using topology optimization software | Image via Scaled

Whereas additive manufacturing is cost effective for prototyping, it is not competitive with conventional manufacturing technologies for mass production; injection molding or CNC machining remain indefinitely cheaper and reliable when you need to produce a part at scale. However, in the case of customization, AM has the advantage: “By moving away from mass production to mass customisation, specialisation becomes affordable. This paradigm shift is possible by being able to prototype and manufacture using the same technology: large scale 3D printing. Design and manufacture of a first production vehicle will be cheaper than traditional methods,” you can read on the website. In the Project Chameleon, Scaled explains that expensive, specialised production equipment and tools were not needed. Every vehicle variant could be produced in a single, versatile manufacturing cell, with no need for large assembly lines. Additionally, lead times were only limited by the speed at which a vehicle could be printed.