FAW opens 'Super Printing Factory', China's first automotive-focused additive manufacturing center
FAW has formally opened China's first automotive-focused additive manufacturing center in Changchun, a 'Super Printing Factory' running 43 industrial printers that it says can turn out roughly 19,000 parts a year.
- 43
- 8
- ~19,000
- 30.59 million yuan ($4.55 million)
What Happened
China FAW Group Co., Ltd. has formally opened its Additive Manufacturing (AM) Innovation Center in Changchun, the capital of Northeast China's Jilin Province. FAW bills the facility as a "Super Printing Factory" and says it is the country's first automotive-focused additive manufacturing platform. The center is designed to serve the whole industrial chain, from research and development validation through to low-volume production.
19,000parts
Roughly, drawn from eight mainstream manufacturing processes across 43 industrial-grade printers.
- No constraints in structural design, which frees engineers' imagination.
- Zero waiting time for validation and upgrading, which significantly shortens the R&D cycle.
- Integrated structure formation, which dramatically enhances production efficiency.
30.59 million yuan ($4.55 million)
Saved by pairing 3D-printed interior components with leather wrapping and smoke-tanning techniques instead of conventional methods.
- Parts built by selective laser melting, including single-cylinder engine heads and catalytic converter end cones, which FAW says match the mechanical performance of cast parts.
- Precise replication of some types of heritage vehicles.
- Tooling and validation parts for FAW's subsidiaries, supplied in the thousands each year as infrastructure.
Why this matters
Additive manufacturing lets engineers design parts without the constraints of conventional methods and validate them without waiting, which FAW says significantly shortens development cycles. The new center shows those advantages moving from lab work toward volume use: FAW says it already cut tens of millions of yuan in costs on the Hongqi Golden Sunflower luxury sedan line. The facility is also meant to supply FAW's own subsidiaries with tooling and validation parts.
Terms in This Story
- additive manufacturing
- A production method that builds parts layer by layer from a digital design, commonly known as 3D printing.
- selective laser melting
- A metal 3D-printing process that uses a laser to fuse metal powder into solid parts, layer by layer.
- tooling
- Manufacturing equipment such as molds, dies and fixtures used to shape and hold parts during production.
- low-volume production
- Building a small number of parts or vehicles, often for specialised or limited-run products.
Summarised from the linked release; details can be imperfect — always verify against the original source.