PORSCHE PRODUCES ELECTRIC DRIVE HOUSING FROM A 3D PRINTER

Lighter, more rigid, more compact: Porsche has produced its first complete housing for an electric drive using 3D printing technology. The engine-gearbox unit produced using the additive laser fusion process passed all quality and stress tests without any problems. “This proves how additive manufacturing, with all its advantages, is suitable for larger and highly stressed components in modern sports cars,” says Falk Heilfort, Project Manager in the Powertrain Advance Development department at the Porsche Development Centre in Weissach.

Engineers in the Advanced Development department were able to carry out several development steps at once with this exciting new prototype. The additively manufactured alloy housing is more lightweight than a conventionally cast part, and reduces the overall weight of the drive by approximately ten percent. Additionally, thanks to special internal structures that have only become possible through the advent of 3D printing, the stiffness in highly stressed areas has been doubled and oscillation of the thin housing walls has been vastly reduced, thus considerably improving the acoustics of the drive as a whole. Another advantage of additive manufacturing is the fact numerous functions and parts can be integrated.

This considerably reduces assembly work and directly benefits quality of manufacturing.

Porsche is intensively driving forward the use of 3D printing technology in its products — 3D printed pistons recently successfully proved themselves in the awe-inspiring 991 GT2 RS.