Formula 1 has often justified itself with the claim that its technologies are used in road cars. This is true up to a point, but some technologies such as carbon composite chassis have been very slow to arrive in the mainstream. The first F1 composite chassis were built 30 years ago and even today only top-end high-performance models use these methods, simply because the chassis are too expensive and labour-intensive to mass produce. However, carbon composites are now beginning to invade the automobile world as manufacturers search for ways to make lighter (and thus more fuel-efficient) cars. This is particularly important with electric cars as the weight has a direct effect on the range of the cars. There is interesting news this week as BMW has announced that it is spending $100 million to build its own carbonfibre thread manufacturing facility, in a move that is aimed at bringing down the costs involved. It is reckoned that carbonfibre costs 20 times the price of steel (by weight), but weighs only half as much in its finished form. There is only one major composite thread manufacturer in Europe: SGL Carbon, which is based in Germany. This creates the threads and weaves them into the “cloth” from which chassis are built (the woven materials are then impregnated with resin and laid into the shape needed and the hardening process is achieved using high pressure ovens – known as autoclaves). SGL Carbon has now entered into a partnership with BMW to build a factory. In response to that move, Volkswagen has bought 9.9 percent of SGL in order to ensure that it continues to get access to composite materials. BMW then raised its stake in SGL from 24 to 27 percent.
The move towards carbon composites in the automotive industry are also related to the spread of new techniques that have been pioneered in aerospace but more recently have been used increasingly in Formula 1, which involved the injection moulding of parts, rather than the much more laborious traditional techniques of lay-up by hand. Automating the process is not easy but the new McLaren road car features this technology and teams are using more and more of this as they race to able to produce parts faster than their rivals.
The latest tweak in the rapid manufacturing processes in F1 is Red Bull Racing’s decision this year to have two rapid prototyping machines travelling to the races inside the trucks. It is not clear whether the machines involved use stereolithographic and laser sintering techniques (the different being that the first uses photopolymer resin and the second powders which are used together by the power of a laser beam. In both cases, the laser fuses the material while scanning a cross-section. The process is repeated with a new layer being added with each scan, until a finished piece is completed. The processes are now so advanced that metal parts can be created although most of the work is with things such as brake ducts. The biggest problem with these systems is getting the data from computers at the factory, where a part is designed, to the transporter, but this means that new parts are available on site and do not have to be flown out once the work is done. They will simple slot on to the car. Thus if the team decides on a Friday that it wants different brake ducts, they will in theory be ready the following morning.
joeblogsf1 
Interesting! What other technologies derived from Formula One are used in road cars?
Pingguest,
Read the history of the motoring industry and the history of motorsport and it will be obvious that this process has been going on since the dawn of the automobile. In the modern era the biggest contribution has probably been in the electronic field.
Joe
That is very cool. If this is one of the reasons Red Bull can keep at the front then I geuss the otehr teams will follow and the Tonnage of the travelling teams increases as well as the costs.
FIA have got to be thinking about new rules to dictate what is allowed on the site fo the track and what is not…. Then a fax voite will be required to see if a device can be powered up at the track and how many hours it is allowed to be used which begs the question…
If they created a new part overnight would this infringe the rules about how many hours engineers are allowed to work or is it fully automated?
The technology bleed from F1 into road cars is a constant thing but with the stricter regulations in F1 over the last 20 years the visibility of the technology transfer has reduced. I think this is simply because there are less major technological innovations possible in F1. Things such as turbo development are big, and obvious but just don’t happen now because the rules allow little room for radical change and I think this is a bad thing for F1 generally. The transfer now is continuous improvement of smaller things, who can measure how much more fuel efficient internal combustion engines have become due directly to learnings gained in F1? By fuel used for power delivered, F1 engines are unbelievably efficient devices!
The other thing that prevents this transfer is the need. As you point out in your post, it is the advent of weight sensitive electric vehicles that is creating a need for composites so the technology has started to be used. It is nearly 20 years now since active suspension was at it’s peak in F1 but it’s hardly prevalent on road cars because in most cases, it’s not needed. Unlike ABS which was undoubtedly improved massively by its use in F1 and benefits practically all cars now.
Who’s to say whether one day even the most seemingly specific F1 technologies, like DRS or at least some for of adaptive aerodynamics mightn’t find there way onto the road. It only takes a need to arise.
G.
Re electronics, the first ECUs in F1 were modified versions of standard Ford road car units.
That is extremely cool for want of a better phrase. Test on Friday morning in FP1, and then manufacture new parts to allow for the conditions. Exciting stuff, but as Steve says, perhaps a slippery slope that should be nipped in the bud.
*This should be taken with a hint of sarcasm*
The more parts being transported via 0s and 1s flying invisibly through the sky rather than in the cargo bay of an airplane the more the teams will need to invest in cryptography. You wouldn’t have to copy a design anymore, just figure out which devices are in the Team XYZ’s garage then harvest all of the raw data being sent to those devices. Throw one of your CFD supercomputers at a brute force encryption attack on the raw data and voila, you can build yourself a Team XYZ part as well. At least until the RRA limits computer usage for industrial espionage.
Facinating stuff as usual Joe.
This is why your blog is my first port of call every morning.
Congrats on a great GP+ as well this week. Bahrain coverage, Lewis insight, Air crash investigation, Monaco detail. Top class.
It makes me wonder why I’m paying €5 for Autosport for week old news…
John
Steve,
These machines are fully automated, much like the 5-axis CNC machines that effectively work in the opposite direction – start with a block of metal and shave it down to get the product. That said, all such machines are ideally supervised, just in case… feed nozzles get blocked, etc.
However, the wording of the curfew regulation was quite specific, and was restricted to “team members directly associated with the running of a car.” On this basis, PR bods, truckies and so forth are excluded… and I’m sure that it could be argued that the bloke watching over the 3D printer is not *directly* associated as long as he doesn’t bolt the result to the chassis himself.
Yuppie Scum,
These machines do not need operators.
Very interesting background here Joe. It seems rapid prototyping technology is really making inroads into racing now.
The advantages are big and it might even lead to less cost in time (less travel), although I guess the materials used now are far from cheap and the process is energy intensive.
I understand Lamborghini is putting more and more composites and carbon fibre on its cars as well. I would estimate that in the next decade we really might see the percentage of steel and aluminium used in cars going down.
Especially as cost for composite materials can go down with innovative manufacturing while these metals see their price rise as worldwide demand grows.
Sorry this is off at a slight tangent here, but the issue of the curfew has me intrugued. What if Red Bull were to have this equipement in a truck parked 5 miles away from a race track – would that breach the terms of the agreement. Or what if some enterprising engineering firm in eurpe where to offer the service – I’m suprised that no one in F1 makes use of companies such as Epsilon Euskadi (there facility looks like something that might even impress the likes of Ron Dennis. Also in general wouldn’t using an outside company like this give teams a few more options in terms of the RRA?
Another thing worth considering, is the fact that F1 does not need to use road relevant engines perse to be road relevant.
It is a high pressure environment that can bring innovative ideas to a higher level of development where more regular industries take them up and make them applicable on a large scale (aerospace, engergy, electronics and car manufacturing).
The new engine format makes sense from a technological perspective not for being closer to real world engines (thats marketing), but because it will enable a bit of creativity that can spur engineering ideas forward.
I think I remeber reading somewhere that Merc and Audi have also signed deals with carbon fibre manufacturers in the last few months.
Rapid prototyping is nothing new. I’m not sure on this, but I think the automotive industry might’ve beaten motorsport to it (first companies started adopting somewhere around 2000). I’m certainly surprised to hear that it’s only this year that they’ve started transporting the machines to the races.
I would also question that “The biggest problem with these systems is getting the data from computers at the factory”. The teams transfer tens of gigabytes of telemetry back to the factory during a race. CAD models of parts (as opposed to assemblies) won’t be more than a hundred megabyes even for very complex geometries. I suspect the issue is more about generating the machining paths from the CAD model but I don’t see any reason why this couldn’t be done using a computer at the track rather than at the factory, meaning less data to be transferred.
I would be interested to hear if someone has other information which would prove me wrong – I find it hard to think the teams with all their expertise will’ve missed a trick like this.
HP have recently brought out a 3D printer (basically a mini rapid prototyping machine) for home users. I think it just uses polymers rather than metals but they suggest you could design your own models (i.e. model aircraft) on CAD software and then “print” them. Off the top of my head it’s around £3000.
Joe,
Sorry to be pedantic, but I didn’t say they needed “operators”, but that in an ideal world they are supervised. Having seen the result of an unsupervised overnight run of such a 3D printer which contained an embedded dead fly…
Further, the output of these machines can be comparatively brittle, and so a subsequent curing/tempering step in an autoclave might be required before the parts are “race ready”.
In addition, if you’re – for the sake of argument – producing brake ducts, you’re going to making them in pairs, or possibly pairs of pairs if you plan on being even-handed between the drivers (may or may not be an issue at RBR), so removing completed parts and ensuring uninterupted supplies of raw materials and so forth becomes very important in a time-constrained environment.
Anyway, all that aside, my actual point was that should there be such supervisory personnel, they won’t come under the aegis of the curfew rules unless they also wield a spanner.
Actually, another thought strikes – there’s no real reason these trucks actually need to be located within the confines of the circuit, and so the curfew doesn’t apply in any case.
Cheers,
YS
Well ABS was mentioned above and it is something I would love to see back in F1, meanwhile the opposite on gear changes, I would like the drive to be involved a lot more in changing gear.
The STL and laser sintering has come on a long way in the last 9 years (since I retired) and I would guess can now produce parts which are impossible to make in any other way. (possibly apart from lost wax) I remember STL items as being ok for form but not function and sintering as being the next step with various metal powders.
Carbon fibre composites as injection mouldings takes me back to the Lotus Elan which if I remember correctly (about 50% chance) was the first vehicle produced from chopped mat and resin injection, though this was first used as a spray process. As I understand it with carbon fibre the autoclave process is merely to cure the resin and has no effect on the carbon at all.
The Elan was around in the era of the first car radio/cassette player (RN582) and like most cars, the radio installation had not crossed the minds of the interior design engineer’s , Thus after the normal warning’s to disconnect the battery etc the first instruction read something like: 1) Remove gearbox assembly. Having completed the installation in only two hours It was of course then not possible to insert or remove cassettes when in first or third gear, due to the proximity of the gear-lever to the cassette carriage.
The advent of carbon fibre bodywork to sports cars changed things greatly as it behaved like a metal body eliminating the need for a lot of additional screening foil and earth bonding. All glassfibre sports cars were a nightmare of RFI (radio frequency interference) from the ignition and/or the alternator, the regulator and the brain and needed bin-fulls of expensive copper braid to earth almost every metal part to the chassis or to one another. FM radio multiplied the problems, though much later the radio circuitry included IAC (interference absorption circuits) and things got a lot easier. All this years before EMC (electro magnetic compatibility) was even heard of!
One thing which Joe did not mention for crossover is the development in battery technology where fast charge rates will become vital if electric cars are to be taken seriously with normal business use in mind. At present they are either hybrids or confined to local use only. No use to me living in darkest Hampshire and visiting 3 customers in Birmingham, Coventry and Uttoxeter and then the next day Cheadle, Crewe and Wolverhampton, then back home. A ten minute recharge max is needed, not an overnight or a 2 hour so called fast charge. How is the Pious accepted in France Joe? The French seen very keen on new technology, though anti Japanese and liable to burn anything they don’t like.
Very interesting. Thinking of the new McLaren, I wonder (Joe – have you heard?) whether they will use the istream techniques being licensed by Gordon Murray Design. There must be room for some old pals acts somewhere…! Though I know little about it, from what I have read it seems to offer some great advantages to the manufacturing process, and claims of saving carbon footprints etc in these times are always going to be investigated.
Hi Joe,
I supposse that the only good thing about having all teams competing basically in aero, is the development of more efficient processes for carbon fibre parts production.
Which is great, as hopefully this will make it affordable for road cars, not only reducing weight, but hopefully signficantly improving safety.
Joe:
since you bring up the subject of developing technologies, do you know if there any conversations at any level regarding making a move, in the long term future, to hydrogen fuel cells or electric motors in F1? I mean well beyond the 2013 engine regulations.
I think this would be a great way for F1 to showcase and develop these technologies and help them make their way into the consumer market.
Every RP’d polymer part will be heavier and weaker than their CF autoclaved equivalent, meaning the team is accepting a weight penalty, so the typical conditions for running one of these parts would be either it’s small, and the additional few grams don’t matter, OR the part is needed to run the car, so the weight becomes moot as running is critical. RBR used WindformXT for rearview mirrors last season, IIRC, and I’ve seen RP polymer brake ducts this season. Little brackets could be made with RP polymers, along with little aero bits to go on the exterior of the car.
I’m at a loss to imagine where RP metal parts could be used – metal is used very sparingly in F1 cars already. I don’t believe RP sintering could produce a part capable of being loaded like an upright. No point in producing sheet metal using an RP machine, it’s easier to haul sheets for that. I don’t see tubing as a place RP would work. Either you’ve got something like an exhaust pipe, which you’d transport replacements for, or something like brake or cooling lines, which you’d keep lengths of tube stock, and cut, flare/crimp and bend as needed. Not a chance an RP fastener would be trusted. So what would RP metal be good for? Mounting brackets for lightweight hardware. What else? My feeling is RP metal isn’t a great fit for an F1 team’s road gear, and I’m excluding it from further consideration.
Further, the scope of RP parts is limited by machine size – RP machines can only make parts smaller than themselves. A larger machine could make something like an engine airbox, but most of the time that capacity will be underused, making stuff like brake ducts. To be fair, you could produce 2 (or even 4) brake ducts at once. My guess would be two medium sized machines, or one larger and one smaller.
So we’ve got brackets, mirror housings, aero bits,and brake ducts. What other practical applications does RP have for an F1 team?
I disagree that f1 makes a huge impact on road cars.
Abs and kers were on passenger cars before f1. Fuel injection from airplanes and carbon brakes from nasa and variable valve timing was around on steam engines.
Sure they affect high end supercars and refinements may trickle down eventually but even as an f1 fan I can’t support this argument.