This site uses cookies to bring you the best experience. Find out more
Skip to main content

Case Studies

Wall-Art Miniature Porsche Bonnets To The Tightest Of Tolerances

When J-Tec Composite Solutions had a novel project to produce miniature carbon fibre Porsche car bonnets, Express Composite Solutions was the obvious choice for the patterns.

J-Tec Composite Solutions provide composite services, including repair, manufacturing and design. They serve a wide range of customers including automotive, aviation and marine industries.

When CAD and patterns were needed for miniature Porsche bonnet wall-art, J-Tec turned to ECS to make use of their laser scanning and CAD/CNC expertise, and capability to produce patterns to ultra-high tolerances.

The Challenge

Patterns for high-gloss finish bonnets

Jason Newman from J-Tec Composites talks us through what he needed: “I have a beautiful Porsche bonnet in Martini colours mounted on the wall at my facility, and I kept getting customers asking for one of their own.

A full-scale bonnet wouldn’t be practical for many people’s walls, so I knew I needed to reduce the scale. This meant I had no CAD data to work from so this had to be developed from scratch. And importantly, at smaller scale and with a lacquered high-gloss finish, any imperfections would destroy the effect.

I contacted ECS as they have all the capabilities required to create the CAD and produce the final pattern I needed for my production mould. I knew ECS would work closely with me to find the best approach, and provide the fast turnaround needed to satisfy my eager customers.”

 

The Solution

Working together for the best solution

Andy Collins from ECS explains the methods used: “We needed to take an unusual approach for the Porsche bonnet - so it was a great fun project to work on. Given this would be wall art, we discussed with James his size requirements and what bonnet inner skin features should be removed.

James supplied us with a full-size bonnet so that we could use our Hexagon RS5 laser scanner to scan both surfaces of the part into CAD. We needed to adapt the CAD substantially for size, to remove inner features, and critically to eliminate any surface imperfections that would show up with the high gloss finish.

We decided, to get the perfect surfaces we would need on these high gloss finished parts, that we would get a friend of ours Mark Foster to redesign the part from scratch using the scan data as a reference. Mark was a lead designer at Redbull F1 for many years and now has set up on his own doing design projects for various customers including ECS."

Once Mark had developed the cad model of the part and we and James had approved the design we got him to produce the cad male patterns of the two surfaces that we would machine , we could then follow our normal production process, choosing Sika M700 polyurethane as the right material for the job. We programmed the CAM system to cut parts on our 5-axis machine and used Vericut to simulate the program to ensure it would be right first time. And once the pattern was produced, we conducted our thorough inspection to make sure it met the tight tolerances.

It was nice also to work closely with James, as he came up with a method of sealing the block and polishing to produce the finish necessary for such high-end parts."

 

The Results

A customer favourite

“What can I say… I’ve sold a lot of these Porsche bonnets! In fact, my customers and I have been so pleased that I’ve gone back to ECS to produce the pattern for a smaller version of the bonnet”.

James continues on working with ECS: “This isn’t the first project I’ve completed with ECS, and what’s always a common thread from my own customer feedback is ‘high quality’ appearing in the comments.

The products have given me further recognition within the industry, leading to a number of new project opportunities."

 

“ECS has from the very start of our relationship been very approachable and engaging on all projects and ideas presented to them.”

James Newman, Engineering Director, J-Tec Composite Solutions Ltd

Back to Case Studies