Companies produce first 3D-printed titanium wheel
HRE Wheels has teamed up with GE Additive to create a prototype 3D -printed titanium wheel.
The new HRE3D+ wheels are formed using the Arcam Q20plus, a cost-effective method of production for aerospace components that melts titanium powder layer by layer via electric beams, allowing the operator to “print” complex shapes.
The HRE3D+ concept combines six separate pieces fastened together with titanium “bolts” and finished with a carbon-fibre rim.
The 3D-printing construction technique is said to be considerably faster and more efficient than others. While a traditional wheel will start life as a 100-pound alloy block and be whittled down to 20, only five per cent of the material is lost during the titanium “print.”
The prototype not only foregrounds the methodology of GE Additive, but it is titanium, which is stronger than conventional magnesium or aluminum alloy wheels, and corrosion-resistant. That it is also much harder to produce and considerably more expensive than even carbon fibre helps explain why mainstream manufacturers haven’t leaped on it yet.
“The goal of this project was less about producing a wheel for the market,” explains HRE creative director Patrick Moran. “It really was a concept — the wheel — to really show the added possibilities of additive manufacturing.”
HRE Wheels president Alan Peltier says the project was about exploring possibilities.
“We’re not just re-defining how wheels are manufactured,” he says. “We’re exploring design ideas that were simply infeasible or unimaginable with current technology.”