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Wheels:
A.W.E. Tuning turbo gauge design gets a boost from Protomold

The car's turbo boost gauge looks like it came installed from the factory; its styling is a perfect match for the rest of the dash right down to the texture and the color of the illumination. On the other hand, this gauge sits in the center of the grill covering one of the dashboard air vents. Both vent and gauge are fully functional, but it's definitely not a factory installation.

"There's just no room for an extra gauge in the existing instrument cluster," says Chris Dollery, director of engineering at A.W.E. Tuning. "You could put it in a pod mounted on the steering wheel, but then you block the view of other gauges in the dash. In the past, you could mount a gauge on the 'A' pillar, but now airbags are there. But to get the most out of your turbo, you need a boost gauge to help you stay in the meat of the power band, and you want it someplace where it can be seen. The vent just made sense."

Creative solutions are nothing new at A.W.E. Tuning. The Willow Grove, Penn., company has been developing and distributing performance upgrades for European vehicles since 1991. Initially, the company focused on performance tuning Volkswagens. (The original name, Air and Water Enterprises, referred to Volkswagen's two lines of engines: air-cooled and water-cooled.) Today, the company provides performance-enhancing products for Audi and Porsche as well, and services more than 700 wholesale accounts globally on a weekly basis.

Want an extra 200 hp from your 250 hp Audi S4? A.W.E. Tuning's RSK04 performance package kit, along with an A.W.E. Tuning performance exhaust system, will do the trick. The RSK04 kit consists of several bolt-on components -- T304 stainless steel exhaust manifolds, oversize twin K04 turbos, an oversize CNC machined 6061-T6 aluminum mass air flow meter housing, replacement fuel pressure regulator, fuel injectors, spark plugs, and a few other components -- all designed to work in unison. These hard parts, coupled with G.I.A.C. performance software, transform the S4 into your own, personal road rocket.

The company's staff of 16 handles R&D, design, manufacturing, and distribution. Products offered at their website range from woven stainless steel brake lines and high-flow air filters to ECU chips and custom tuning to complete performance kits like the one mentioned above. A.W.E. Tuning partners with specialized companies like Bilstein and Moton for shocks, Brembo for brake system upgrades, G.I.A.C. for automotive performance software, and H&R for suspension products. These augment the company's own line of products designed, and in some cases manufactured, in-house.

"The bottom line is performance," says Dollery, "but our customers are very picky about fit and appearance. Take the vent-mounted gauges, for example. We offer them for a number of different vehicles. One is modified from the original factory part, one is machined, two of them are injection molded, and we'll soon be adding another injection-molded model. They are a popular product, but sale quantities are typically in the thousands, not the tens of thousands needed to justify the cost of traditional injection molding. Prototyping to add new models to the line would have been particularly difficult if it weren't for rapid injection molding from Protomold.

"To add a boost gauge for a new car model, we start with investigation. We'll rip out the guts of the vent assembly and use a Microscribe CMM digitizing arm to reverse engineer the vent grill insert. The robotic arm records landmark points on the part to create a 3D image in the computer. We import that model into our SolidWorks CAD system, modify it to hold the gauge, and send the 3D CAD model to Protomold.

"Protomold's online quoting system gets us pricing within a day for injection-molded prototypes, but it also gives us moldability feedback on the design we've submitted. We've got some really good engineers on staff, but our knowledge is spread across everything from electronics to metal; we're not really plastics experts, so the feedback we get from the ProtoQuote system can be really helpful. The feedback is graphic and straightforward. If we need to change a wall thickness or draft angle, it shows us exactly where and how to make the change."

"When we first started working with Protomold," continues Dollery, "we had to make a lot of changes in our designs; now we've learned a lot and don't have to change much at all. Other companies we worked with relied on us to design a perfect part and gave us exactly what we ordered even if it was wrong. In another case, we designed a fairly thin-walled part, and the molder said it would be no problem, but they couldn't produce the part. With ProtoQuote, the system spots that sort of problem before they accept a final model.

"The best thing about rapid injection molding is that it is economical for both prototypes and production. We get the moldability analysis from ProtoQuote before the first prototype is made. The prototypes are quick and affordable and are perfect for detailed functional testing. Protomold's standard 15-day turnaround on parts is fast enough for all our needs, but it's good to know that, if we need it, we can get fast-turn parts in as few as three days. If our functional tests show a need for changes, we can get new prototypes quickly and inexpensively. For example, we had one Delrin prototype that had a shrinkage problem. Delrin does tend to shrink, so we redesigned the part and solved the problem in the next prototype.

"Once the prototypes are finalized, we can go right into production," says Dollery. "Before rapid injection molding, our choices were machining parts, which was expensive, or having steel injection molds made, which was extremely expensive before we even had the first part made. Now, injection molding is affordable, and we can have parts manufactured in appropriately sized lots as we need them."

The company has had parts molded in a variety of resins. In some cases, these are a blend of ABS and polycarbonate to match the OEM part being replaced. A snap-fit part was molded in Delrin for its surface lubricity, which aided insertion. The company uses custom colored resin supplied by Clariant Masterbatches. The vent-mounted gauge has won design awards, including a "Select Gear" award from European Car magazine.

"We plan to keep expanding our product line," says Dollery. "We'll use whatever materials and processes work best for the product. But these days, we always look at injection molding first."

Source: Protomold

Published June 2013

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