DELAGE
3D PRINTING TECH SAVES A VINTAGE GP RACER
What do you do when your priceless one-of-a-kind ancient Grand Prix race car blows up? Nowhere in the world is there a spare motor. Only three were ever made, and your car is the sole survivor. What are your options ? There is zero prospect of the right motor ever turning up, any where, no matter what the price. No barn finds, no hordes of parts awaiting Indiana Jones type exhumation. None of the attempted repairs hold. No familiar technolog y offers a cure for the catastrophic failure.
Options are limited. Do you insert a stock standard replacement motor – something from the period but a poor substitute without the competition innovations and pedigree – and pretend it is all as it should be? Do you accept that the integrity of the historical object is destroyed, but at least it still drives. Might you surrender, conserve the object and your funds and turn the car into a static museum piece? Or do you trust technology and go where no one has been before?
Remind yourself that old cars were once new. Technology that has long been superseded was back in its day cutting edge. So there is a wonderful poetic symmetry when the most technically advanced engine of a century ago is replicated using the most advanced techniques available today.
In what is claimed to be a global first application of 3D printing, one of the worlds oldest surviving Grand Prix racing cars has been returned to the road. The 1914 Delage was one of three identical factor y entries for the 1914 Grand Prix in Lyon in France. She was only saved from ‘The Great War’ by being exported first to the USA and then eventually many decades ago to Australia. She had been used reliably until – several years ago – a crack developed in the water jacket in the original engine block. Water meets oil.
Now, demonstrating typical Aussie ingenuity and more than a fair dose of engineering f lair, a dedicated team of experts has cloned the broken engine block, casting a new one from a sand
mould created by a 3D printer.
Nothing this complex has been tried before in the many emerging automotive applications of 3D printing. It is a leap into the future. It means a historic and incredibly valuable car is saved and can race again, using a motor that is in every minute detail totally identical to the broken original.
The Delage resides in suburban Melbourne, but is fettled by Grant Cowie and his team at ‘Up The Creek’ Garage in Castlemaine in Central Victoria, the self proclaimed hot rod capital of Australia.
“In my opinion it is the best car in Australia” says Grant. After various failed attempts at repairing the cracked block with conventional methods, including laser welding, the bold decision was taken to go lateral. “I thought we have to do this differently, a totally new approach” says the transplanted Kiwi who has developed a well deserved reputation as a classic, veteran and vintage car wizard.
Owner Stuart Murdoch placed trust in the team, despite the leap into the unknown with his precious heirloom. “Boldness be my friend” was his guiding emotion as they set to work.
Industrial designer Phil Guilfoyle stepped forward as project manager. His combination of engineering nouse with mastery of emerging technologies leaves him with unique insights into what can today be achieved. “What this technolog y offers is a solution that is incredibly accurate, non-destructive and quick. It is ver y cost effective and really suits high-value, low-volume manufacturing”.
The original motor was totally stripped, subjected to metallurgical analysis and scanned minutely over every surface, inside and out.
The resulting 3D-scan then became a CAD (Computer-Aided Design) model, appeared on screen and could be adjusted and modified digitally as required. Obviously the fractured metal was repaired, curing on the screen and in the virtual world the damage that proved unrepairable in the real world.
The data was sent to CSIRO who have the only 3D sand printer in the country. Their interest in the project was not commercial but scientific. They want to push the science to its limits and to see if the emerging technolog y could solve such a complex problem.
Casting an entire new block from a mould set made by traditional pattern making for this Delage engine block – as done when it was new – would require somewhere in excess of 40 individual wooden patterns to be made, estimated to take thousands of hours and much more than a year. Any adjustments would require similar time frames all over again. The savings from using the computer technolog y are self evident.
The crew at Keech Australia in Bendigo were given the task of casting the block. The work at the foundry is the only part of the process that is relatively unchanged. Just like in 1914, they still mix and melt the correct formula