Automotive industry

Additive Manufacturing for the Automotive Industry

Leverage additive manufacturing as a strategic driver to accelerate innovation, increase efficiency, and extend vehicle lifespans – shaping the future of automotive design.

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Additive Manufacturing for the Automotive Industry

Challenges

What does the automotive industry demand – and what is our solution

Better Thermal Performance

3D-printed components improve thermal performance by enabling precise control over geometry and material placement. Internal cooling channels, airflow paths, and heat-optimized structures can be integrated directly into the component, reducing hotspots and improving heat dissipation. Material can be reinforced precisely where high temperatures occur, ensuring that components maintain their dimensional stability and mechanical strength under repeated thermal stresses, as commonly experienced in automotive applications.

Extended Design Possibilities:

3D printing offers virtually unlimited design freedom. This allows even the most complex features – such as cavities, intricate or honeycomb structures, or the finest details – to be produced with precision and reproduced at any time. This design freedom helps developers realize their ideas without limitations. Combined with the fast printing speed and low material consumption of 3D printing, it also enables experimentation with new shapes and structures that can enhance performance or energy efficiency.

Lightweight Construction & Material Efficiency

3D printing enables the production of highly optimized, material-efficient structures by placing material only where it is functionally required, rather than relying on the uniform wall thicknesses or solid geometries of conventional manufacturing methods. Through topology optimization, lattice structures, and load-oriented design, components can achieve the same – or even greater – mechanical performance while using significantly less material.

Dimensional Accuracy and Stability

Components are manufactured directly from CAD data, ensuring high repeatability and tight tolerances without tool wear or mold deviation. The geometry can be optimized to control shrinkage, warping, and thermal expansion, while ribs and reinforcement structures are integrated to maintain shape under load and temperature fluctuations. This results in components that fit precisely and retain their dimensions throughout thermal cycling and the service life under the demanding conditions of the automotive industry.

Aerodynamics

3D printing is revolutionizing aerodynamic development in the automotive industry by enabling the rapid design of flow-critical components. Engineers can create highly complex geometries and finely tuned surface structures – often not achievable with traditional manufacturing methods. Additive manufacturing thus unlocks new levels of aerodynamic performance. It also facilitates more precise and cost-effective wind tunnel and vehicle testing, allowing designers to validate and optimize aerodynamic concepts under realistic conditions. This combination of design freedom and accuracy accelerates innovation, improves fuel efficiency, enhances vehicle stability, and supports the development of the next generation of high-performance and sustainable vehicles.

Interior Design and Model Making

Somos® WaterShed® Black is a high-performance Stereolithography (SLA) resin, ideal for applications such as interior components and model making, where durability, aesthetics, and level of detail are critical.

The material offers good tensile strength and tensile modulus, ensuring solid stiffness and structural integrity for automotive components. With a moderate elongation at break, it also provides sufficient toughness to withstand handling and moderate mechanical loads. The heat deflection temperature is 50 °C, making it suitable for components exposed to low heat.

Somos® WaterShed® Black is recommended for its balanced combination of mechanical strength, dimensional stability, and excellent surface finish. These properties make it particularly well-suited for high-quality automotive interior components that require both visual excellence and reliable everyday performance.

Properties

Tensile strength at break: 50.4 MPa
Tensile modulus: 2,770 MPa
Water absorption: 0.35%

Use cases

Mirror housings
Rims
Radiator grilles
Bumpers
Interior components

Realistic Multi-Color/Material Prototyping

PolyJet materials are widely used in the automotive industry for realistic multi-color and multi-material prototypes, offering high detail accuracy, color fidelity, and functional versatility. They support over 500,000 colors, including realistic paint shades and custom blends, ensuring accurate visual representation.

Thanks to Digital Materials technology, PolyJet materials can combine rigid, flexible, colored, and transparent properties in a single print to simulate plastics, rubber-like, and polypropylene-like components.

Rigid PolyJet material such as ToughONE™ offers high strength and durability – ideal for functional prototypes and automotive components exposed to high loads. It delivers precise, smooth surfaces for production-representative parts.

For flexible applications, Agilus30™ delivers durable, tear-resistant materials that combine elasticity with exceptional impact resistance. It ensures smooth surfaces, high precision, and consistent performance, enabling rapid prototyping, functional testing, and small-series production of flexible automotive components. VeroClear™ delivers rigid, transparent components with excellent dimensional accuracy and surface quality, ideal for functional prototypes, design validation, and visual inspection where clarity and precision are paramount.

Properties

Standard accuracy: 0.1–0.3 mm
Layer thickness: 0.032 mm
Minimum wall thickness: 1 mm

Use cases

Small-series model prototypes
Headlight prototypes
Dashboard prototypes
Manufacturing aids

Large Mechanical Components

Stratasys® ABS-M30 is a production-grade FDM thermoplastic that is 25–70% stronger than standard ABS, making it well-suited for large mechanical components in the automotive industry. It offers a balanced combination of strength, toughness, and thermal stability.

ABS-M30 exhibits excellent tensile strength and tensile modulus, allowing large parts to achieve the required stiffness for structural and load-bearing applications. Its good impact resistance and a heat deflection temperature of up to 96 °C ensure dimensional stability and durability in typical environments.

ABS-M30 is ideally suited for large mechanical components, thanks to strong layer bonding and the ability to manufacture large parts in one piece. This makes it a lightweight and cost-efficient alternative to machined metal tooling in vehicle development and retooling cycles.

Properties

Tensile strength: 32 MPa
Flexural strength: 60 MPa
Heat deflection temperature: 82 °C at 1.8 MPa

Use cases

Bumper brackets
HVAC housings
Intake ducts and airflow guides

Fixtures and Brackets

Stratasys® FDM Nylon 12CF is a polyamide-12 composite reinforced with chopped carbon fibers (35% carbon fiber content by weight) that can be effectively used for automotive fixtures and tools where high stiffness, low weight, and durability are required. The material achieves a tensile strength of approximately 76 MPa, a flexural strength of approximately 142 MPa – the highest among Stratasys FDM thermoplastics – as well as modulus values of up to approximately 5,700 MPa for exceptional stiffness. The heat deflection temperature is approximately 143 °C at 264 psi, making Nylon 12CF suitable for applications at elevated temperatures as well.

These properties make Nylon 12CF a strong alternative to conventional materials in automotive manufacturing, as the weight of fixtures can be reduced by up to approximately 50% compared to metal, facilitating handling and transport. High stiffness and durability allow repeated loading without significant deformation, making it particularly suitable for assembly fixtures, positioning aids, and inspection tools. In addition, good thermal stability and chemical resistance to many oils and greases ensure reliable performance at elevated temperatures as well as in typical automotive assembly environments.

Properties

Tensile strength: approx. 75–76 MPa
Heat deflection temperature (HDT, 1.82 MPa / 264 psi): approx. 143 °C
Flexural strength: approx. 140 MPa

Use cases

Locating pins & datum points
Assembly positioning & locating fixtures
Testing and inspection fixtures

Wind Tunnel Testing

Somos® PerFORM™ is a stereolithography resin by Stratasys® developed for strong, rigid, high-temperature-resistant composite parts. Its detail resolution and stiffness make it the optimal choice for representative prototype parts for wind tunnel testing.

The material demonstrates high mechanical and thermal performance, with a tensile strength of 68 MPa after UV post-curing and up to 80 MPa after thermal post-curing. Flexural strength follows a similar trend, reaching 120 MPa after UV post-curing and up to 146 MPa after thermal post-curing. In terms of heat resistance, the heat deflection temperature (HDT) can reach 268 °C at 1.81 MPa, demonstrating excellent performance at high temperatures. Additionally, the glass transition temperature (Tg) ranges between 72 °C after UV post-curing and 81 °C after thermal post-curing, highlighting the benefits of thermal post-processing.

Somos® PerFORM™ delivers the strength, precision, and surface quality required for high-precision wind tunnel testing, supporting rapid prototyping and reliable aerodynamic research in the automotive industry.