We are going to have a bit of a chat about 3D Printing, the different materials that you can use and the different options that are available. This little product here, which was originally machined out of Nylon or Acetyl, and CNC Machined with a little Circlip to retain it in place. The purpose of the product is to stop metal to metal contact and rattling.
Instead we now print them out of this flexible TPU material on our 3D printer. You can see the flex in there. And it is actually a pliable material, which means that it helps absorb the sounds and rattles and is a better product.
I will show you how these are installed. So instead of using circuit, because of the fact that out is flexible, we can actually just press them in, and they hold in much better than the previous way we were doing it.
So, we’re actually printing him right now on the 3D printer. We print nine at a time, on this flexible TPU material that comes from the filament.
And the other thing it allows us to do, is it allows us to change the design very quickly without having to create tooling, because traditionally with injection moulding you would have to create tooling which costs thousands of dollars.
There’s lead times on changing that, but being able to 3D print it means we’re quite flexible, we can change diameters to suit different models, so this is new technology moving forward.
