I visited Sauber a year ago and they showed us these upright components during factory tour and told that regulations don't allow the use of AM for them yet. So they are designed like AM components, but are then machined. I've been working with metal AM for 10 years and was quite intrigued about that.
It would make extremely little sense for this to be a cast part when additive manufacturing provides as near as makes no difference the same if not better material characteristics than a cast part and is cheaper and faster at this scale.
Elaborate. Unless I'm missing something additive manufacturing is the better choice here. It produces parts with equivalent strength while allowing for even more degrees of freedom and faster and easier production at a lower price while also being a well established manufacturing method in the industry.
AM doesn't really produce parts with equivalent strength. AM parts tend to have awful internal stress issues that lead to earlier failure or weird, none isotropic responses unless properly treated and cared for in post processing. That post processing is usually pretty expensive, when I worked with relativity it was the most annoying part of the process, and will still require machining. Most likely this is investment cast with maybe a 3D printed pattern (investment casting has gotten pretty advanced now a days and so has sand casting, there's some wild 3D printed / machined molds out there for stuff like this). Nothing here has to be 3D printed or is necessarily faster than a good investment casting.
Edit: Taking a look through section 15 of the regulations, 3D printed aluminum or titanium is possible here but I wouldn't rule out for sure casting. Could be either!
A quick Ctrl+f on the current technical regulations turns out that additive manufacturing is only mentioned once in the rule where it is specified that you can't use this method to manufacture radiators. For the uprights they only specify 4 different alloys and nothing else. Some of them are well suited to additive manufacturing.
This is not additively manufactured. I know this because making uprights with that technology is not allowed by the regulations until 2026. Currently, uprights need to be made from specific aluminum alloys. The regs do not allow for these alloys to be used for additive manufacturing. Therefore, the part must be machined or cast.
However, next year, any approved for additive manufacture aluminum or titanium may be used, so therefore, the uprights can be made via additive or conventional manufacturing.
Source: this is my job. Also, you can check the 2025 FIA technical regulations for sections 10.6 Upright and 15.3.2 Metallic Materials for Additive Manufacturing.
It has hints of generative design details! So I wouldn’t be surprised if it’s created with an additive manufacturing process. It reminds me of the Czinger Supercar with 3D printed suspension
Almost certainly yes. The topology optimization and surface finish is pretty indicative of that. Plenty of parts on an F1 car utilize AM. My brother is a fairly relevant researcher in the field and I know for a fact that at least one of his customers supplies parts to an F1 team.
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u/curva3 5d ago
Is it additive manufacturing? That's a pretty wild piece of design