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Vital Auto is an industrial design studio
with deep pockets of expertise in automotive design.
We work with every major OEM,
that includes the likes of Geely, Tata, Nissan,
Volvo, Lotus, McLaren, and the work is to bring
their high-fidelity prototypes to various contexts
that they want to use them in
in the shortest amount of time possible.
Clients typically come to us to try and push the boundaries
of what's possible with the technology available.
They don't have time for experimentation themselves,
but they can rely on us to bring about
all the different elements that go into creating
the exact tool that they require to do the job.
It's very process and product agnostic as well
in many ways, you know, we're looking at making things
that could live in the virtual world
as much as they do in the physical world.
We'll take a design anywhere
from an already designed vehicle,
from just simply a sketch on a piece of paper.
We will design all the main frames,
all the exteriors, interiors, open-closings,
pretty much whatever the customer needs on his vehicle.
A typical show car can go through many design iterations.
So sometimes, we will have one or two iterations.
Sometimes, we will have 10 or 12 iterations.
Within those iterations can be further iterations
of smaller components.
Most of our customers will come to us with a new idea,
an innovative idea, something that's never been done before,
so the challenges for us
are new every single day and they're endless.
Much of the time, the traditional processes
are just no good for producing those parts.
That's why we then started to look at 3D printing.
When we engage with a new customer,
the initial sales inquiry
is just the first part in the journey.
So we need to make sure that we're set up
to fully support that customer
on new applications that they might want
to be taking on in the future,
and then also how they are gonna be looking
to scale up production to meet the full requirement
of their customer base.
Today, we have a whole 3D printing department.
We have large format FDMs, Formlabs 3Ls,
we have a Form 2, and we have Fuse 1s.
In terms of capacity on all those printers,
pretty much since day one, they've run a 100%, 24/7.
We use these printers
for all areas of our concepts and designs.
Typically, we would use the Fuse
for our production-based parts
and we would use our 3Ls for our concept-based parts.
We use Formlabs 3L machines for anything
that is an A-class finish surface.
So, typically, in an automotive environment, an interior,
where you have parts that are not being trimmed
with leather or Alcantara or some sort of cloth material.
Formlabs materials give us a nice, smooth finish
for our painters to work with.
The thing that interests me most
about Formlabs 3L machines is their versatility.
The ability to do a material change
in less than five minutes
and the variability of those materials.
Going from a soft, flexible material
to a machine hard and rigid material, for us is priceless.
With the 3L, that allows us
to produce multiple iterations of parts
within, most of the time, less than 24 hours.
We ended up buying three different machines
so we could produce for our customers
up to three different iterations of a part at the same time
and we could also achieve this
in three different materials as well.
Formlabs 3L has allowed us to produce
much more complex parts that, typically,
we would never have been able to produce.
Even with techniques such as 7-axis CNC machining,
this would come at a huge compromising cost.
The 3L negates all of that.
It allows us to produce complex geometry very, very quickly
and very cost effective.
Fuse 1 was our first venture into SLS technology.
This is a technology we thought
we would never be able to have on site.
What these machines enabled us to do
is produce structural mechanical parts very, very quickly,
not only for testing for physical applications
for most of our concepts.
For example, door hinges, door handle inners,
anything that has to bear a structural load.
The reason we do this is because straight off the printer,
we can apply them to the job.
They require almost zero to no finishing at all.
Typically, when we would outsource
or machine in-house CNC parts, we would have to wait
two, three, four days to get the parts in our hands.
The Fuse 1 enables us to have hands on parts
in most instances, less than 24 hours.
A lot of people think that additive manufacturing
is here to replace subtractive manufacturing.
We don't think that.
We use the two together to help support each other
so we have many parts where we would use
subtractive manufacturing
and then have additive manufacturing
produce all the finer details.
This allows us to have a much more cost-effective way
of producing a lot of our concept models.
One of the beauties
of using additive manufacturing
is the compression of a timeframe,
so what do you do in that sort of span of time
that you have freed up.
We sort of see it as extending the possibility space
into imagining alternatives,
adding more iteration loops in the process.
Things that would have traditionally taken a lot longer
are being compressed and so are the demands on us as well
to make some of the things that we are putting out there
more salient to the people
who are evaluating those properties.
The progression in technology in 3D printing
over the last sort of 10 years, it's phenomenal.
When I first started producing low volume niche vehicles,
some of the products that we produce today
would simply have been inaccessible
compared to what I'm able to produce today.
And not only am I able to produce these parts today,
I'm able to produce them
very cost effectively and very quickly.
There are certain things
that you just can't class as emerging technologies anymore.
3D printing is one of those things, you know?
It's advanced to a point where everything that we produce
is good enough for use in the final presentation stage
with all the layers of making that we apply on top of that.
3D printing has gone from almost a novelty
to becoming an absolutely inseparable part of what we do.
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