Nikon SLM and Bosch print complete V8 engine block as single aluminum part
One-piece AlSi10Mg block, built on the NXG XII 600 at Bosch's Nuremberg center, another signpost of metal additive manufacturing moving into high-value automotive production without tooling or castings
Nikon SLM Solutions and Bosch Industry Consulting have collaborated to produce a complete V8 engine block as a single piece in the aluminum alloy AlSi10Mg, building the part on the NXG XII 600 multi-laser system at the Bosch Additive Solution Center in Nuremberg, Germany.Â
The project carried metal additive manufacturing past prototyping and development and into the kind of complex, high-value automotive application where the process can compete with, and work alongside, conventional production methods.
No tooling, no castings
Producing a cylinder block by conventional casting first requires tooling, a step that can run to weeks or months of development and validation before any part leaves the line. Each later design revision means reworking that tooling, at further time and cost, and the casting process itself limits the shapes a part can take. Building the block through AM removed those constraints, the companies reported, with complex geometry produced directly from the digital file and none of the lead time casting imposes.
That freedom allowed features that would be difficult or uneconomical to cast, among them cooling channels formed inside the block, weight-reduced structures, and the merging of what would otherwise be several separate parts into one.Â
Working to DfAM principles, material sat only where structural analysis called for it and was pared away elsewhere, producing a block the companies stated was considerably lighter than a cast equivalent with no loss of performance, a saving they described as material for motorsport and high-performance powertrains.
A supplier-led route to production
Bosch, among the largest tier 1 automotive suppliers, brought decades of manufacturing knowledge to the work, while Nikon SLM Solutions supplied the production platform together with materials qualification, process parameter development, data preparation and quality assurance software, and application engineering.Â
The companies framed that combined involvement as a condition of AM reaching real automotive volumes, noting an estimate that 60 to 80% of the components in a finished vehicle come from tier 1 and tier 2 suppliers rather than the vehicle maker.Â
For AM to scale, they argued, it has to take hold across that supplier base rather than remaining inside OEM development centers.
