Stratasys Ltd has announced a new multi-year technical partnership agreement with Team Penske to continue to bring the time-saving benefits of 3-D printing to all Team Penske NASCAR, IndyCar and IMSA Sports Car teams.

Tim Cindric, president of Team Penske, said: “Stratasys has consistently contributed to our ability to reach new solutions for improving our race performance ahead of the competition.

“Our 3-D printing strategy has always been to produce high-quality parts for our racing operations in the shortest amount of time, and the ever-evolving additive technology from Stratasys gives us confidence in our approach.”

Team Penske and Stratasys have worked together through five championships and achieved more than 70 race wins since their relationship started in 2017. In that time, Team Penske has gone from two Stratasys 3-D printers to four.

The company now has three FDM (fused deposition modelling) 3-D printers for working with advanced materials: a Stratasys F900, a Fortus 450mc, and a Stratasys F370 — primarily for tooling, fixtures and end-use parts for cars. The team also has a PolyJet Technology-based J750 3-D printer for prototyping.

All are installed at the Team Penske facility outside of Charlotte, North Carolina. Stratasys also supports the organisation with advisory and technical support services, aided by cloud-based GrabCAD Print software.

Matt Gimbel, Team Penske’s production manager, says Stratasys additive technologies have made a big difference. “The Stratasys partnership has allowed us to not only increase our output, but also produce parts in new materials that are immediately installed on race cars.

“As a result, we have more design freedom and manufacturing speed to iterate faster to reach the optimum design. Ultimately we get better parts to the racetrack faster.”

Previous options to produce composite layup tooling were limited to the team’s CNC machining technology. Now, Team Penske is largely using FDM 3-D printers, and says an idea on Tuesday can be in the car on Wednesday and ready for the weekend race.

Race teams also are increasingly using 3-D printed parts in the cars themselves, particularly those made from Nylon12 Carbon Fibre.