CUSTOMER STORY
Toyota's Lightweight Car Seat: A Bionic Design
2 min read
![Rear view of a 3D-printed car seat with lightweight structures](https://assets-eu-01.kc-usercontent.com:443/8ff24b0e-57a3-0157-62d1-fa4ac9734eb5/b96aab5a-e917-4143-bd62-2c8dde283aec/hd-toyota-car-seat-3-matic.jpg?w=3840&q=90&lossless=true&auto=format)
![Rear view of a 3D-printed car seat with lightweight structures](https://assets-eu-01.kc-usercontent.com:443/8ff24b0e-57a3-0157-62d1-fa4ac9734eb5/82eccc5a-d0e6-415d-b932-f8fccd1d55ca/hm-toyota-car-seat-3-matic.jpg?w=1200&q=90&lossless=true&auto=format)
How do you produce a lightweight car seat prototype with a minimal volume and an optimal heat capacity? What about editing and 3D printing such a large and complex file? Materialise's solid reputation in the automotive industry is built on extensive experience of producing large prototypes. To help Toyota create a lightweight car seat, our software team added new features to our design optimization software 3-matic, and developed a slice-based operations technology which is incorporated into the Build Processor software.
![Toyota’s lightweight car seat (3D-printed prototype)](https://assets-eu-01.kc-usercontent.com:443/8ff24b0e-57a3-0157-62d1-fa4ac9734eb5/2a2e7339-2f92-42e4-8889-13946c1fcbcd/cimq-medium-toposeat1front.jpg?w=1920&q=90&lossless=true&auto=format)
![Toyota’s lightweight car seat (3D-printed prototype)](https://assets-eu-01.kc-usercontent.com:443/8ff24b0e-57a3-0157-62d1-fa4ac9734eb5/2a2e7339-2f92-42e4-8889-13946c1fcbcd/cimq-medium-toposeat1front.jpg?w=1920&q=90&lossless=true&auto=format)
To obtain an optimal design, it is often useful to take a peek at nature. Ages of evolution have formed optimized structures that offer valuable solutions for present-day issues in design and engineering. Toyota’s car seat design was inspired by bone structure, resulting in a gradient topology optimization with high-density and low-density areas, designed with the Materialise Mimics software. The design was then perfected and provided with a pattern in 3-matic, and oriented on the build platform with Magics.
![Close-up view of the lightweight structures in a car seat prototype, made with 3D printing](https://assets-eu-01.kc-usercontent.com:443/8ff24b0e-57a3-0157-62d1-fa4ac9734eb5/5ce24ca0-f456-4de3-88b0-397377b7acda/cimq-toyota-car-seat.jpg?w=1920&q=90&lossless=true&auto=format)
![Close-up view of the lightweight structures in a car seat prototype, made with 3D printing](https://assets-eu-01.kc-usercontent.com:443/8ff24b0e-57a3-0157-62d1-fa4ac9734eb5/5ce24ca0-f456-4de3-88b0-397377b7acda/cimq-toyota-car-seat.jpg?w=1920&q=90&lossless=true&auto=format)
With the design optimised, the next — and main — challenge was to get it printed. Complex designs, with lightweight structures, patterns or textures result in extremely large files that are hard to handle. With the slice-based operations technology of the Materialise Build Processor, the car seat’s file size could be reduced significantly and building it was a piece of cake.
Toyota’s impressive prototype only weighed 7 kg, down from 25 kg, and the heat capacity was reduced from 35.4 to 14.5 J/K. Will they continue using 3D printing? Yes, they will!
Share on:
You might also like
Never miss a story like this. Get curated content delivered straight to your inbox.