How 3D printing could add efficiency to EV power electronics

“Think production!” Perhaps that advice should be posted on the wall of every design office, R&D lab and advanced technology center in the auto industry. Although obeying that warning is clearly not cost-effective in some instances, others are ostensibly perfect to take their place in volume manufacture. An example is 3D printing (aka additive manufacturing, or AM), but despite a broadening scope that now embraces rapid prototyping and tooling by entire houses, it could do better in series production of auto components, particularly in the new world of EVs.

Prof. Peter Wilson of the U.K.'s newly established Institute for Advanced Automotive Propulsion Systems (IAAPS) at the University of Bath, noted the growing adoption of high-speed SiC (silicon carbide) and other wide-band-gap semiconductor devices demonstrates the benefits that 3D printing could have in the production of EV inverters. “SiC devices offer so much opportunity to improve inverter performance,” Wilson said. “But system designers are often unable to take full advantage of their potential because their ideas cannot be manufactured using conventional techniques.”