#8 Taking on Time-Honored Manufacturing with the Latest Technology

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This series features Toyota’s project to revive a legendary racing car—now on display at the Fuji Motorsports Museum with a look at the project members’ efforts as well as the history and meaning behind the vehicle.­­

This article follows the journey of members who cast the transmission case and the clutch and brake pedals.

Producing sand molds with cutting-edge 3D printing technology

This project with mainly young members involved rebuilding the legendary 1951 Toyopet Racer by sticking as closely as possible to the original production methods, seeking to pass on its creators' car-making philosophy and techniques to the next generation.

As outlined in part three, the team responsible for reconstructing the transmission played a crucial role. The challenge of fabricating the cast iron case to house this transmission and other cast parts, such as the clutch and brake pedals, fell to #junyanakazawa of the Production Engineering Development Center’s Raw Material Development Div.

On joining #toyota in 2017, Nakazawa became part of what was then the Casting Production Engineering Div. At university, he majored in information systems engineering, researching areas such as programming.

Nakazawa

Since I entered the company, I’ve been preparing casting equipment for production and developing production methods.

I joined this project on my supervisor’s suggestion. As someone working in the development of high-mix, low-volume production technology, I saw this chance to recreate a single car as a great opportunity to further myself and jumped at the opportunity.

I didn’t know about the Toyopet Racer and was surprised to learn that the car was originally built as part of Kiichiro Toyoda’s vision of developing Japan’s automobile industry.

The largest part of the racer’s transmission is the cast iron case. In keeping with the spirit of the restoration project, Nakazawa wanted to ensure this part was also created using the original methods.

Doing so entails first making a metal pattern and placing it in sand, which is hardened to create the mold before the pattern is removed. The part is then cast by pouring molten iron into the cavities of the sand mold. However, producing sand molds in this way is generally expensive and time-consuming.

Nakazawa

Ideally, we wanted to create the part using the same mold techniques originally used for the Toyopet Racer. Unfortunately, this method requires repeat prototyping of the sand mold to get the accuracy right, which takes at least a few months. That would not have fit in with our schedule for completing the restoration.

To get around this, we decided to make the sand mold without a metal pattern, instead relying on the 3D printing used to develop and manufacture engines for racing cars.

Further information in the press release to download