Prodrive‘s 3D printing success story shows how functional prototypes and rapid tooling can significantly speed up the development of a race car.

“3D printing is an important part of our design and development process that has massively reduced our reaction time,” said Prodrive chief design engineer Paul Doe. “The technology allows us to produce new parts for the test car within hours of a problem or need being discovered.”

With 3D printing technology, the team can quickly test new ideas without the large cost of retooling production equipment. The prototypes that are “printed” are production ready, reducing time traditionally spent creating new parts and testing them sequentially. In fact, the cost of this development effort was 1/5 the size of a comparable project not using 3D printing.

Read more about this announcement here.