Technology4 min
Why we print the tooling, never the car
3D printing is everywhere in our workshop and nowhere on the finished car. Here is the philosophy behind that line.
It is now easy to print a fender. It is also a mistake. Printed polymers do not take paint like steel, do not age like aluminium, do not sound like metal when a door closes, and do not carry the value of an authentically coachbuilt car.
So we draw a hard line. Everything we print is a tool: hammer forms, bucks, jigs, fixtures, drill guides, check gauges, trim patterns. Everything on the car is the material Porsche would have used, or a better grade of it: steel, aluminium, leather, wool, glass, walnut.
The advantage is not speed, although it is faster. The advantage is precision. A printed buck is accurate to the digital master, and the digital master is accurate to the factory. The craftsman's hands do the rest, exactly as they did in 1973, with far less guesswork.
That is what we mean by modern coachbuilding: the old craft, guided by new certainty.
Juan Carlos Guerra · 911 Imports, Laredo