Toys

R/C Car Parts Company Races to Production with Components Produced on an Objet 3-D Printer

Budapest firm Nimrod Racing™ is an expert designer and manufacturer of R/C car components. Initially, Nimrod Racing depended on conventional 3D milling, but as the market changed, it realized it needed to progress to 3D printing.

"The ‘make everything lighter' trend in automobile manufacturing is the same for R/C cars, so we needed to replace metal parts with plastic," says Ádám Novák, Designing Engineer at Nimrod Racing. "Also, the parts are usually quite complex so 3D printing is faster than milling."

Objet's  Eden250 3D printer,  proved the perfect combination for Nimrod Racing.

The benefits that Nimrod Racing has realized as a result of working with the Eden250 printer fall into the main categories of time, creativity, and cost - which together have helped the manufacturer improve its competitive position in the fast-paced market for R/C car parts.

"We're pushing the advantages of the Objet machine like nobody else before because our prototype parts are used as functional parts built into real R/C racing cars used on real racecourses." says András Szász managing director, chief designer

Prior to installing the Eden250 3D printer, moving new products from design to sales was a lengthy and waste-heavy process. After the design phase, the project was sent to manufacturing and then it could take six or seven months until the complete prototypes were returned. Nimrod Racing is in the exclusive modeling business and hence needed only a few of each part. However, the company would order many more pieces than needed because only a few of the prototypes would meet its exacting standards for perfection. This resulted in a huge amount of waste products - and added cost.

Now that Nimrod Racing is able to manufacture the end parts in-house using its Eden250 3D printer, time and product wastage is a thing of the past. "Today, we don't need to consider long production phases; we can concentrate on our core activities of designing and engineering," adds András Szász. "We start sketching in the morning and we often have the final plans on our desk in the afternoon. Then we start printing and let the machine work unattended, so that the prototype is ready when the sun comes up - that's how simple it is!"

"Our work became faster, and a lot more efficient, thanks to the quality and reliability of our Objet printer. It used to be that producing ultra-mini series, such as limited and numbered editions, was simply unaffordable. Today, we are able to manufacture small numbers of parts for competitive prices. We're pleased to be gaining a real presence in the market for highquality models, thanks to our Eden printer."

More freedom to create

The half-year or longer wait for prototypes meant that Nimrod Racing's supply time to customers was very slow, severely impacting its competitive power. And, working with outside suppliers carried its own costs in terms of the time and hard costs of finding the right suppliers and then managing them.

The picture looks quite different today.János Márton Szász, managing engineer, explains: "Thanks to our 3-D printer, we hold the production in our hands and don't depend on any other parties. This means that the preparation of a new product is finished in less than two months! Our engineers don't spend any time searching for and keeping in touch with suppliers. Instead they only focus on their most important work: designing parts and printing prototypes to create mini-series."

Reduced cost of error

To build its brand, Nimrod Racing aimed to produce a wide variety of R/C wheels, which meant a different tool was needed for each rim and wheel. The high number of tools raised the primary costs and also carried a high cost of error as any malformation in the tool caused larger problems, particularly when it was not noticed early enough. "All in all, the production of tools was very expensive, error was unavoidable and so only large series were profitable," says Ádám Novák, Designing Engineer.

Summarizing what Nimrod Racing has gained by choosing Objet technology for its 3D printing needs, András Szász managing director, chief designer concluded: "Objet opened the door to the manufacturing of high-quality, yet cost effective, limited editions of parts. With the Eden250 printer, there's no need to give tooling over to other engineering companies that specialize in the making of costly tools."