The Formula Student team, at the Royal Institute of Technology (KTH) in Stockholm, has together with AMEXCI, additively manufactured a bracket with various designs for their Formula Student racing car. The collaboration resulted in faster production and decreased lead time, while improving design and tolerances. 

Formula Student is the world’s largest annual collegiate engineering competition, where young and ambitious students from universities around the globe, work together in small teams, to build a formula-style, open-wheeled race car. Across faculties they manage everything from financing and sponsorships to the development of the vehicles themselves, including electric powertrain and autonomous drive. 

In 2021 The Royal Institute of Technology (KTH) in Stockholm got in contact with AMEXCI to learn about additive manufacturing and understand if AM could be used to overcome their production challenges. 
– We wanted to find a manufacturing process that would enhance fast production while getting good tolerances and eliminating the risks of harming parts during production, says Nikhil Srikkanth, member of the KTH Formula Student team. 

Nikhil Srikkanth, member of the KTH Student Formula team.


A bracket made possible with additive manufacturing. 
To start with, Nikhil and his team conducted a workshop in additive manufacturing fundamentals at AMEXCI. The next step was to apply the learnings on the actual project and assess the most feasible part for printing. Together they investigated several parts of the car before deciding to 3d-print a bracket, or rather 18 different brackets.
– This specific bracket is an essential part of the car as it functions as an attachment point between the suspension control arms and the chassis. Due to the complex surface curvature of the chassis, each bracket differed slightly in shape and size. This causes something of a headache when trying to mill the parts in a CNC machine. With some re-design we could place 18 CAD-files of the parts, next to each other in a build-file, says Nikhil Srikkanth.

The bracket is an essential part of the car as it functions as an attachment point between the suspension control arms and the chassis.
The parts were printed at AMEXCI in 2021.
The project resulted in 18 different brackets being successfully printed.


The parts were printed at AMEXCI in 2021 with support from AMEXCI’s production team and Design Engineer Srikanth Purli. The project resulted in 18 different brackets being successfully printed with reduced manufacturing time from roughly 2 weeks to a handful of hours, since the brackets could be printed in one go. The final parts also hold the necessary tolerances and design required by the team.  
-We are happy to have been part of this project. The team has worked hard on design for additive manufacturing, and we are really pleased to see that they can see the potential of AM. It looks bright for the future since they are the next generation of innovative engineers entering the market, says Srikanth Purli, Design Engineer at AMEXCI.

If you want to learn more about the Formula Student team at KTH, please contact:
Nikhil Srikkanth: nikhil.srikkanth@granges.com
Website – www.kthformulastudent.se
LinkedIn –  https://se.linkedin.com/company/kth-formula-student
Instagram –  https://instagram.com/kthformulastudent?igshid=YmMyMTA2M2Y=