Staffordshire-based Midlands 3D Printing Ltd has entered into a new technical partnership with West Surrey Racing, ahead of the 2022 British Touring Car Championship. Parts manufactured by the company at its 3-D printing facility in Stone will be used on the Team BMW 330e M Sport race cars as they take to the Donington Park grid on 23 April for the season opener.

Midlands 3D is supplied with HP Multi-Jet Fusion 3D printers and fully supported in the UK by Matsuura Machinery Ltd - the UK’s leading authority on HP MJF 3D printers and their manufacturing applications.

Midlands 3D offers a range of services including prototyping, design and manufacturing services. Technologies include FDM, SLA and industry-leading HP Multi-Jet Fusion (MJF) to produce strong, durable components from their fully in-house manufacturing facility, perfect for the fast paced and demanding functional requirements of motorsport applications.

In line with the BTCC’s incorporation of electric-hybrid powertrain technology in 2022, Midlands 3D’s use of sustainable materials – such as recycled filaments from Filamentive and HP’s High Reusability PA12 nylon - in their production processes, helps WSR to move towards a less environmentally-impactful way of working.

With reduced lead times and increased design flexibility on component design compared to more traditional manufacturing processes, and a reduced reliance on an increasingly fragile supply-chain, on-demand 3-D printing is increasingly popular for motorsport and wider automotive industry applications.

The two WSR-run Team BMW 330e M Sports of four-time BTCC champion Colin Turkington and team-mate Stephen Jelley plus the ROKiT MB Motorsport 3 Series of Jake Hill will use components created by Midlands 3D throughout the 2022 BTCC season.

The company’s branding will also appear on all three race cars. The 64th BTCC season kicks off at Donington Park on 23-24 April and features a 10-round season at the UK’s best racetracks. Every race is shown live and uninterrupted on ITV4 in high definition.

Dick Bennetts, WSR team principal, said: “Using components produced with Multi-Jet Fusion technology is a first for WSR and we are very interested to see how we can not only reduce lead times, but also - through the use of HP’s High Reusability PA12 - improve the sustainability of what we use to build and prepare our championship-winning BMWs.

Paul Moloney, Midlands 3D managing director, said: “We see the BTCC as an ideal platform to showcase our capabilities and processes showing how our sustainability focus can be of benefit to the motorsport industry. We believe WSR are perfect partners to help us achieve this.”