Loughborough University, 11/12 July 2007

On 11/12 July, the 2nd International Conference on Rapid Manufacturing took place at Holywell Park, Loughborough University (UK).
The Sir Dennis Rooke Conference Centre hosted this year’s conference that also included an exhibition of metallic and polymeric RM machine manufacturing companies, material suppliers and RM service organisations that ran over the duration of the conference.

Actually a great success for CRP Technology that had the chance to exhibit some interesting components, in collaboration with Amber Composites -a leading supplier and manufacturer to the composites, tooling and adhesives market and since mid 2006 the official distributor of WINDFORM to the UK market, providing both materials and the technical support required to produce parts for RP & RM applications.
CRP Technology and Amber Composites also sponsored the Conference Dinner on Wednesday 11 July and it was for everybody a great opportunity to meet all the guests and speakers and have a good time together. The dinner took place at the National Space Centre at Leceister.
Gabriele Tredozi, Special Projects Senior Technical Director of CRP Racing -the new company born from CRP Technology experience in motorsport engineering- made his intervention on Thursday morning, during the session about “Materials development for RM”. The title of the Case Study was “Turning point in the creation of racing engines: structural parts made by laser sintering” and Mr. Tredozi explained how Ilmor and CRP Technology are implementing RM in 4-stroke MotoGP engine development. Besides the numerous non-structural parts made by selective laser sintering that can be found in the Ilmor engine, the 2007 innovation project is a real turning point in the creation of racing engines!
Everyone at the conference has been very interested to hear about the new challenge of the camshaft cover for the newest Ilmor engine, a structural part that support the bearing of the camshaft (19000 rpm) and that is directly applied on the 4 stroke 800c engine head, whose average working temperature is about 130-140°C. This project has been thought to improve the lightness of the engine head cover, the reliability but also to have faster modifications and production. That allowing to change some features of the part even during the season.

Our Special thanks go to the organizers of this conference, as this kind of event always is a great opportunity to show the CRP’s high professionalism, quality and service.

The full paper of the Case Study is online:   Click here to download 744.65 Kb

Useful link for the information about the people and the interventions nominated can be found on www.rm-conference.com.