KW Motorsport’s core technology is around cars and they started off in 2003 designing and manufacturing a Le Mans racing car that ran on Bioethanol and was the fastest car in a straight line.
In 2007 they designed the first Le Mans car to explore digital manufacturing and used CFD/data analytics rather than a conventional wind tunnel.
The company’s 2015 Le Mans car utilised a high degree of Additive Manufacturing and due to technical regulation changes they had just six weeks to design, develop, manufacture, fit and test the cockpit structures of the car.
In 2012, Kieron set up a special projects group, as the company were finding that they were getting involved in more non motorsport projects in which they were able to utilise their high performance motorsports skills. Digital Manufacturing being particularly identified as a key sector in which the high speed vortex of R&D would be ideally suited to.
Kieron outlined how Additive Manufacturing leads to Digitally Connected Manufacturing and went onto to highlight some of the areas that they’d transferred their skills to and the R&D processes they undertook.
What’s your view on horizontal innovation, are there other applications yet to be implemented within the automotive sector that could be transferred across to other sectors?
Deborah-Claire is a Community Manager at the IET, a semi petrolhead if there can be such thing, with a liking for vintage cars especially the Bugatti T35.