Jaguar XE SV Project 8 races ahead with unique 3D printed parts

news

The XE SV Project 8 is Jaguar’s most extreme road-going saloon ever made.

It is fitted with a 600PS 5.0-litre V8 petrol engine and honed at the fearsome Nürburgring Nordschliefe race track.

But it is an important car for another reason.

The Special Vehicle Operations’ creation is also the first production vehicle made by Jaguar Land Rover to include multiple 3D printed parts. More than a dozen components created at Jaguar Land Rover’s Additive Manufacturing Centre in Gaydon were used.

While most of them are hidden from sight, a handful can be seen by the owner. These include the plinth for the number plate at the front, and a couple of fins designed to improve the aerodynamics. But the team’s greatest addition was inside.

Those who opt for the ‘Track Edition’ version would find the rear seats stripped out and a roll cage and racing harnesses added.

It is where the harnesses meet the seat that gave the Additive Manufacturing team a chance to shine, with the creation of a bespoke bezel on the racing bucket seats.

The part has some overhangs and details that engineers decided would be too complex to manufacture using traditional methods.

Using HP’s Multi Jet Fusion 3D printing technology, the team created identical seat bezels as the engineers had designed, and put them through the same stringent testing as any other part would endure.

With a little help from the Model Design Shop, the team soon had a quality finished part befitting the £150,000 super saloon.

The quality of the 3D printed part was so well received, the team was commissioned to create a few more for the XE SV Project 8, including a blank to cover where a traditional seatbelt would be, and bespoke mounting brackets for the car’s parking distance sensors.

The mounting brackets would be fitted to the XE SV Project 8’s carbon fibre bumper, however the adhesive struggled to bond with the polymer parts. The team created a complex lattice structure to increase surface area and mechanical grip, and amazingly reduced the cost of each part by saving material.

A number of other 3D printed components featured on the XE SV Project 8. It was a proud moment for the team to have parts they helped develop and print on a halo Jaguar. It also gave confidence to other teams across Jaguar Land Rover on the quality and consistency 3D printing can offer.