Porsche and MAHLE 3D Printed Piston

Porsche, MAHLE and Trumpf have teamed up to work on 3D printed pistons for the Porsche GT2 RS giving the bi-turbo Engine some additional 22 kW 

Of course 3D printing in general (and 3D printed-piston) have been widely used during the past years in Motorsport but it is the 1st time that additive printed pistons would be used for a « commercial » supercar such as the high-performance 911 GT2 RS

3D printing offers a lot of advantages because it removes some machinery contrains. In the case of the GT RS2, the pistons are 10% lighter which allows the engine regime to be increased by up to 300 rpm resulting in additional 22 kW power.

The approval testings included 6000 km at an average speed of 250 km/h + 135 h at full load.

In addition, 3D printing enables specially shaped cooling gallery near the piston rings reducing the temperature load to up to 20 degC. The pistons are also stronger because they can be specifically reinforced where needed.

The pistons are made of an aluminium-based proprietary casting alloy M174+ by MAHLE. The alloy is first atomised into a fine powder which is carefully checked (grain distribution, possible contamination, moisture, etc.). Then the power is melt during the printing process using Laser Metal Fusion (LMF). This technic prints the piston in consecutive layers in a bed of powder. This process takes place in a chamber (TruPrint 3000 series from Trumpf) flooded with an inert gas . The non-fused powder is then removed.

Please note that even if the Porsche is equipped with 6 pistons, only 5 pistons can be printed at a time due to the TruPrint 3000 size. 

Porsche sees 3D printing and additive process as a Technology offering many possibilities for their high performance small series-production. They recently made a complete Electric drive housing in 3D printing for their high performance prototype.