UK – Engineers from KW Special Projects (KWSP) in Brackley used their additive manufacturing capabilities and high-performance engineering experience to design and manufacture missing parts for the restoration of a 1927 Amilcar C6, based on a black-and-white photograph.
The car had featured an extended selector housing, adapted from the original. Using Solidworks CAD software, KWSP converted scan data into CAD files providing the mechanical interfaces and geometry to design the new cover. Since the original castings came from handmade patterns, there were few exact features that could be predicted.
“Also, the new ergonomic position of the gearshift via the remote linkage was not easy to predict,” said Kieron Salter, managing director, KWSP, “so we not only had to reverse engineer the casing, but also its installation in the car and the hard objects such as the dash bulkhead and steering wheel in order to get the positioning correct.”
Describing the project as “unique”, Salter said that additive manufacturing had enabled faster and more cost-effective parts production than conventional methods. “This approach enabled us to fit a printed prototype into the actual vehicle to ensure it met with the design brief, fitted perfectly into the cockpit and also gained the owner’s approval.” The final part was made by traditional aluminium casting.
