RENSHAPE® SOLUTIONS RENPASTE SMP USED ON DAYTONA PROTOTYPE
03 April 2003 - Huntsman Advanced Materials

Based in Ancarano in central Italy, Picchio design, manufacture and market short run state-of-the-art racing cars for the international supercar circuit.

For the Daytona prototype project, designers and engineers at Picchio worked
together to design a new category of high performance car. This later proved highly competitive, qualifying third at this year’s Daytona “24 hours” endurance race.

After intensive research into the range of materials available for this type of rapid
prototyping application, Picchio specified the epoxy modelling paste RenPaste SV
4503 from RenShape Solutions. This was used to make the model of the car body,
comprising ten separate components. The largest of these for the car boot,
measured 2m x 2m x 1m.

Picchio’s engineers first built a slightly undersized polystyrene model of the car body, from CAD data. This was covered in a 40mm thick layer of RenPaste which was dispensed through a meter/mix machine.

Once cured, the RenPaste model was machined to the exact required dimensions for the car body. This was then used to build the moulds in which about 20 carbon fibre prototypes were vacuum-formed.

“We chose RenPaste because it provides the right balance between costs, time and
quality,” explained Guido Pandoli, from Picchio. “Also polystyrene is a low cost
material compared to wood or other materials and using RenPaste enables us to
minimise waste materials”.

“For example, if we used a wooden model, we would have to throw away the core of the model, as we only needed the outer contour. Paste models also exhibit an
excellent surface finish.”

Using RenPaste SV 4503, Picchio were able to deliver the new car to their customer
just seven months after it left the drawing board. The usual timescale with this type
of project, averages a year.

“Speed is the key element for us,” said Di Pietrantonio, Managing Director of Picchio S.p.A, “both in racing and the manufacturing of our cars!”

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