Ford Turns to SLA and SLS 3D Printing for the Electric Explorer

Ford, one of the largest car manufacturers in the world, has set itself an ambitious goal: The company is aiming to have an all-electric passenger vehicle lineup in the EU by 2030. Leading the way in this initiative is the new Ford Electric Explorer, whose prototypes were produced using SLS and SLA 3D printers from Formlabs.

More specifically, 3D printing was adopted at PD Merkenich’s Rapid Technology Center, which is responsible for the design of Ford’s passenger car models such as the Fiesta, Focus and Kuga, notably during prototyping. And it is here that the company used the Form 4 and Form 3L, among other Formlabs solutions, for the production of the Explorer, thus allowing different printing processes and materials to be used to produce prototypes of mirrors, handles, charging ports and parts of the dashboard.

The 3D printed parts

Ford’s Rapid Technology Center produces full-size prototypes, which requires the use of various machines. For this reason, the center has injection molding machines, forming tools, various subtractive tools and, of course, 3D printers. Since 1994, when it was the first Ford plant to be equipped with an SLA printer, the use of additive manufacturing has rapidly expanded to include FDM, SLA, SLS and metal 3D printing. The first Formlabs printer in use was the Form 2, followed later by desktop printers, the large format Form 3L and finally the Form 4 MSLA printer.