Cases

Zagato is a design consultancy and engineering service bureau situated just outside Milan. The company was established at the end of World War I by Ugo Zagato. Zagato differentiated itself from the competition by using aircraft industry construction techniques in the expanding market for passenger vehicles. Zagato's cars were advanced in design and became synonymous with lightweight and excellent aerodynamics. The creation of a series of legendary racing cars, such as the Alfa Romeo 1500 then followed. In the 1940s, Zagato was very much active in this field of GT cars, which at the time was a new racing category. In addition to the cars that are now officially produced in small series, the company also builds exclusive one-offs for illustrious marques like Ferrari, Maserati, Alfa Romeo, and Aston Martin.

For one of these exclusive projects, Zagato partnered up with Materialise, who specialise in personalised manufacturing.

Yoshiyuki Hayashi, a Japanese car collector, commissioned the design of a one-off sports car to Zagato's design team. Zagato has designed a completely new car of which every single component is custom-built.

When only a limited series or one single copy of your product is required, starting up a whole production line could never be profitable. Rapid Prototyping & Manufacturing solutions provide an affordable solution here!

For this specific sports car, Materialise assisted in building the headlights. Analysing the specific requirements of the customer, we decided to have the two headlights built with Fused Deposition Modelling. The FDM technology produces superior parts. The great advantage is the durability of the material used, the stability of the mechanical properties over time and the quality of the part.

The 2 headlights were "printed" on the FDM machines using ABS as material. Afterwards, they were finished with a primer, painted and metalised. All this within 5 days!

After this project, Zagato has requested similar headlights for other new car designs. For this, Materialise advanced one of their other low volume manufacturing techniques: vacuum casting. This is the ideal solution when you need a small series for a limited audience. You can start with a limited amount of your design and re-order on the move.

Materialise owns the world's largest RP capacity based in one location and treats these technologies as real production techniques. This puts us in pole position to practice Rapid Manufacturing. At Materialise, we think this is an unfortunate wording. The use of Rapid Prototyping techniques to make end products is just one, yet important method in what we like to label Personalised Manufacturing. In addition, our more conventional technologies like rapid tooling and vacuum casting can contribute to Personalised Manufacturing.