USC Racing and Wayland partner to create innovative titanium part for Formula SAE race car
June 12, 2025
Wayland Additive, based in Huddersfield, UK, has partnered with the University of Southern California’s (USC) Formula SAE Team to produce and supply a titanium exhaust collector for its 2025 race car. The complex part, traditionally challenging to manufacture, was successfully produced using Wayland’s NeuBeam Electron Beam Powder Bed Fusion (PBF-EB) metal Additive Manufacturing machine, reportedly a first for this application.
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Formula SAE is an annual engineering education competition where university teams design, build, and race high-performance vehicles under strict time and resource constraints.
Samuel McCarthy, a student at USC and Suspension Lead for the USC Racing – Formula SAE Team, shared, “The exhaust collector is the part that joins each cylinder’s exhaust into one stream, and it directly affects engine efficiency and performance. Physically it is a complex part with a series of connected tubes. There are usually two critical design considerations: performance versus manufacturing difficulty. Optimal performance requires optimised angles of the tubes where the exhaust flow meets, a certain initial contact of flow. Manufacturing the ideal exhaust collector with these preferred angles is generally not possible with traditional methods, such as welding, and there is always a trade-off between the two. By using AM, specifically Wayland’s NeuBeam process, we have been able to minimise the trade-off and get the best of both worlds.”
The challenges in manufacturing the USC Racing exhaust collector traditionally would require welding nine 1 mm titanium tubes. McCarthy added, “The part would consist of nine custom-copied tubes, which means that they need to be cut by hand following complex contours, with compromises on the angles. In addition, five of the nine needed to be stretched to size. Getting all nine to fit together with minimal gaps takes many, many hours by a highly skilled fabricator, and even then, there is still margin for error.”
Utilising Additive Manufacturing not only allowed USC Racing to overcome the constraints of traditional manufacturing processes but also addressed available space issues.
“Because traditionally manufactured collectors are welded and made from tubes which must be cut very precisely at difficult angles it compounds available space problems: the tighter the packaging requirement the more difficult it is to make. The Wayland produced part reduced the length of our exhaust collector by 50%. And this is a really big deal,” McCarthy commented.
This project began when members of the USC team first approached Wayland at Rapid TCT in August 2024, seeking a collaborative relationship. Further discussion led to collaborative design and some subsequent test pieces ahead of producing the final part.
McCarthy also noted how the capabilities of the NeuBeam process and producing the part on Calibur3 were essential to the successful outcome, “The ability to produce a complex part of this nature in Titanium together with the low thermal stresses was fundamental for our application. The heat cycles seen and high vibratory environment could fracture a DMLS part. Also, the small hook retaining feature would have proven too difficult to descale.”
One of the additional advantages of the NeuBeam process is minimal post-processing steps required for the exhaust collector. With no sinter cake around the part, it was quickly and easily removed from the powder bed and only required minimal cleaning.
“Some machining was required. The bore was machined to allow a sealing fit for each exhaust tube to be pressed into and a flange was machined to match a V-band, an industry standard exhaust quick disconnect,” McCarthy stated. “The main challenge in machining any complex part is indicating and holding. A feature was included on the printed part to assist in indication. And a custom clamp was made to hold the part while machining, a standard practice.”
Following production, the titanium collector was subjected to five intensive test simulations, each one adding over 22 km. The performance and reliability exhibited during testing carried through into the competition, which took place from May 14 to 17, 2025.
USC Racing placed 3rd in the autocross event, which challenges the car to the utmost pace, and successfully completed the endurance event, a feat only 49 of 120 teams managed in 2024.
