College of Southern California (USC) Racing – Components SAE Group has partnered with Wayland Additive to additively manufacture the exhaust collector of its 2025 automotive.
Components SAE is an annual engineering training competitors that sees groups compete in a sequence of off observe and on observe occasions towards the clock.
Every group designs, builds and races an inner combustion engine automotive with restricted sources inside the college yr.
This yr, USC Racing – Components SAE Group linked up with Wayland to harness NeuBeam 3D printing know-how to provide a fancy titanium half that has been tough to fabricate with conventional strategies, in addition to different 3D printing processes. The exhaust collector joins every of the cylinder exhausts into one stream and straight impacts the effectivity and efficiency of the engine. Made up of a sequence of linked tubes, the system requires optimised angles the place the exhaust stream meets.
Historically, to fabricate the exhaust collector would require welding and manually chopping 9 1mm titanium tubes. 5 of the 9 additionally must be stretched to measurement, so getting all 9 to suit along with minimal gaps is a prolonged and extremely expert course of.
“As a result of historically manufactured collectors are welded and produced from tubes which should be lower very exactly at tough angles it compounds accessible house issues: the tighter the packaging requirement the tougher it’s to make,” stated Samuel McCarthy, a pupil on the USC and Suspension Lead for USC Racing – Components SAE Group. “The Wayland produced half lowered the size of our exhaust collector by 50%. And it is a actually large deal.”
The 2 events got here collectively ultimately yr’s RAPID + TCT occasion in Los Angeles, with members of each groups shortly collaborating across the design and testing of 3D printed components. After a number of design iterations and an intensive testing marketing campaign as soon as components have been delivered to USC Racing, the exhaust collector was deemed able to race between Could 14-17, 2025. USC Racing achieved its greatest outcomes of threerd in autocross, an occasion which challenges the automotive for the utmost tempo and achieved a group inner aim of finishing an endurance occasion which solely 49 of the 120 groups completed in 2024.
Keegan Duarte, Business Functions Engineer at Wayland Additive, commented: “Wayland’s Business Group labored intently with Sam and the USC Racing group to totally perceive their technical and efficiency necessities. We collaborated by a number of design iterations to stability manufacturability with optimum half efficiency. NeuBeam’s low residual stress and minimal post-processing have been key benefits for this demanding utility. Having the ability to shortly flip round components on the Calibur3 made an actual distinction below tight timelines. The collaboration demonstrated how Wayland’s know-how can straight tackle and overcome sensible manufacturing constraints. We hope to maintain working with the USC group — wishing them the perfect of luck of their future races.”
