Lightweight automotive and motorsport prototypes produced in hours.

In today’s fast-paced industrial landscape, the demand for more efficient and sustainable manufacturing processes is on the rise. Designers and manufacturers are under increasing pressure to deliver high-quality low-temperature tooling applications swiftly and sustainably.

In automotive and motorsport, where frequent design iterations are needed, the traditional method of having to store, manage, extensive CNC machine and perform laborious hand-finishing from solid blocks, resulting in heavy, expensive prototypes with long lead times, is often repeated multiple times, increasing costs and environmental concerns.

Paste_Pro with Aibuild software transforms automotive prototyping by automating what was once a manual, labor-intensive process. While traditional tooling board methods require workers to cut, bond, and shape multiple heavy sections over days or weeks, typically resulting in 50% material waste from machining the blocked up board, the Paste_Pro system takes hours to print the near net shape ready for minimal CNC finishing – the example car model took 2 hours to print and 21 hours to CNC finish, around 25 hours less compared to CNC machining blocked-up tooling board to a lightweight prototype.

This 3D printed approach to tooling slashes lead by removing the time-consuming preparation and setup work of cutting and gluing up boards, with 3D printing resulting in less than 20% of material being machined away.

The SikaBiresin® MC80 polyurethane paste material has quick setting time that allows designers to rapidly prototype different car designs and test multiple iterations in a fraction of the time required by traditional methods. This rapid turnaround enables automotive designers and engineers to explore more design possibilities and accelerate their development cycles with dimensionally stable, high-quality parts.

Aibuild’s advanced toolpath strategy solves the complex challenge of hollow angular printing through automatic model analysis with an advanced angle predictor that determines optimal printing planes for overhangs. The software’s revolutionary single wall construction dramatically reduces material usage while its adaptive layer management creates a sophisticated zig-zag sorting pattern that eliminates layer-to-layer jumps entirely. Unlike traditional 3D printing software that requires constant jumps between disconnected sections, Aibuild’s continuous back-and-forth motion transforms fragmented printing into smooth, uninterrupted production that enables the shift from weeks of traditional prototyping to hours of automated manufacturing.

In an industry where speed-to-market and design optimisation are critical, the Paste_Pro system gives automotive and motorsport teams a decisive advantage. Traditional methods demand significant manual labor: transporting heavy board sections, cutting and gluing them together, and extensive machine and hand-finishing over weeks. The Paste_Pro removes these inefficient steps, fully automating what was once a labor-intensive process. By replacing weeks of manual preparation and machining with hours of automated 3D printing in a fast-setting, dimensionally stable polyurethane material, manufacturers can explore more design possibilities, reduce prototype costs, and maintain their competitive edge in the fast-evolving automotive landscape.