Bendix Commercial Vehicle Systems makes brakes, ABS systems, lane departure systems, drum brakes, and more for commercial vehicles.Vincent Bendix founded the firm in 1923 after his father was hit by a car and died due to poorly performing brakes.With 4000 employees, the Knorr-Bremse subsidiary is a leading supplier of vehicle systems, known for being highly vertically integrated.
Bendix tooling parts 3D printed in carbon fiber-reinforced PEEK with soluble PEEK supports.Image courtesy of Bendix.The Advanced Manufacturing Engineering team was looking to quickly test, validate, and update manufacturing systems.
The company has used additive manufacturing for tooling manufacturing for a while.Advanced Manufacturing Engineer Jon Hembree stated, “I could print a tool, go downstairs and test it, throw it away 20 minutes later and make my design modifications….I just pull out my spare and queue another print—I’m not cutting a purchase order and waiting 16 weeks for the tool shop to manufacture another unicorn.People try to look at the business case.
It isn’t until you get to the other side of that investment that you realize all the other things you can do because you made that investment.And then you’re left wondering why you didn’t make the investment sooner.” Bendix tooling parts 3D printed in carbon fiber-reinforced PEEK with soluble PEEK supports.Image courtesy of Bendix.
The company has now started using the AON3D Hylo Industrial 3D Printer.This high-flow, high-temperature dual-extruder material extrusion system prints PEEK and Ultem.The system has automated calibration, including an optical nozzle inspection, and uses linear encoders.
The chamber measures 650 by 450 by 450 mm, and the nozzle can go up to 500 °C, while the bed and chamber can go up to 250 °C.The system also has Basis, an AI-driven parameter-tuning tool that analyzes your individual part to determine optimal settings.The tool can also be used for simulations and to change process temperatures at specific locations in the print.
The Bendix team didn’t want a closed printer and liked the fact that the Hylo was open material.The need for the system over desktop machines came from the parts’ durability and mechanical performance requirements, which needed high-temperature materials.Now the team uses materials such as CF PEEK with soluble PEEK support.
The software experience was also a selling point for the printer, and the team felt simulation would lead to fewer errors and failed builds.A Bendix production line using 3D printed tooling.Image courtesy of Bendix.
Bendix said tooling costs dropped from $15,000 to $20,000 to around $500 to $600.The company also had an internal requirement for a planarity tolerance of 0.005 inches (0.127 millimeters), which the parts meet.The Hylo costs $156,000, so an 8-year ROI on this one example is perhaps not amazing.
But the team is also much faster at producing new jigs and tools, which speeds up the firm’s manufacturing.Here is where the bigger gains will come from; even a one- to two-day lead-time reduction in brake pad production will be a big win for the team.Over time, they will also make fewer mistakes because faster, more available prototypes help.
Some of Bendix’s assembly lines could be very high output and have very expensive downtime per hour.Lines or cells that are down could easily cost $10,000 per hour.So MRO, expedited repairs, and quick fixes to get cells and lines back up can pay for the printer very quickly indeed.
The best investment of this system would be to expedite repairs that preemptively prevent lines from going down.That, in terms of client risk, revenue, and the overall happiness of everyone involved, would pay itself off very quickly indeed.Subscribe to Our Email Newsletter Stay up-to-date on all the latest news from the 3D printing industry and receive information and offers from third party vendors.
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