Hyundai expands polymer 3D printing with two ExOne VX1000 HSS systems
The Korean automaker is now producing full-scale parts, including complete door panels, on one of the largest polymer 3D printers on the market, installed at its Namyang R&D Center.
Hyundai has installed two VX1000 HSS polymer 3D printers from ExOne Global Holdings at its Namyang R&D Center in South Korea, adding large-format High Speed Sintering to a 3D printing program the automaker has run since 1996. The systems sit within Hyundai’s newly formed Additive Manufacturing Solutions team, which supports pre-production and test part manufacturing, small-batch production and prototyping for research, and the urgent sourcing of long-lead parts that would otherwise require tooling.
The investment targets full-scale functional parts rather than prototypes. Hyundai is using the VX1000 HSS to print large components in single runs, including complete door panels, reducing the assembly steps, joints and tolerance stack-up errors that come with building big parts from smaller pieces.
“Hyundai is using High Speed Sintering exactly as we designed it, for full-scale functional parts,” said Eric Bader, CEO of ExOne Global Holdings. “Keeping large polymer parts accurate and repeatable, print after print, is one of the hardest challenges in polymer 3D printing. We solved it, and that turns additive manufacturing into a tool automotive teams can rely on for real development work.”
The VX1000 HSS has a build volume of 1,000 x 550 x 190 mm (39.4 x 21.7 x 7.5 in), making it one of the largest polymer 3D printers on the market. It runs PA12 powder, a high-performance engineering thermoplastic widely used in industrial additive manufacturing, and a printhead with 8,000 nozzles prints even its largest parts, such as a full door panel, in a single run. In ExOne’s High Speed Sintering process, an infrared-absorbing ink is applied selectively to PA12 powder across the print bed and fused layer by layer with a sintering emitter, with temperature control across the full build volume keeping part properties consistent from print to print.
The process shortens design iterations from weeks to days and lowers development costs, according to ExOne, while opening up geometries conventional manufacturing cannot produce. Because the printed parts are functional components rather than models, Hyundai can validate complete assemblies at full scale.
ExOne built both systems for high uptime: replacing the sintering emitter or a print module is designed as a routine task, and both machines stream process data in real time, including a video feed of the print in progress, so operators can fold the printers into existing production monitoring. A single unpacking station and a shared powder supply run both machines.
“The intelligent powder management balances very different build jobs and utilization levels and consistently delivers high-quality powder to both machines,” said Alfred Griesser, deputy head of research and development at ExOne. “That lets the team run up to 80 percent recycled powder without compromising part quality.”
ExOne’s global after-sales network backs both systems at Hyundai across their full lifecycle.
