Racing Toward 2025 AMUG Conference

The 2025 AMUG Education & Training Conference, an additive manufacturing-focused event is gearing up. Running March 30 to April 3, 2025, at the Hilton Chicago, the event convenes engineers, designers, educators and managers who can attend any of 150 technical sessions, participate in hands-on workshops, learn from keynotes, glean insights from panel discussions and network during the event. The event aims to provide space for attendees to share expertise, best practices, challenges, and application developments while engaged in learning.

One of the keynotes to headline this event is Joe Scarbo, president of Scarbo Performance, a company he started in 2009 primarily as an engineering consulting business for motorsport engineering. Over the years, Scarbo says his company has designed a lot of components in cars and systems and has produced functional prototypes. “That is the big-picture scope of what we do,” he says.

He explains how a technical sales rep position he took at a 3D printing service bureau opened him up to the world of 3D printing. “When I took the job at the service bureau I didn’t know what to expect. I saw the parts as little mockup tangible prototypes, not thinking these things would ever be used or could be used in real applications.

“That opened my eyes to 3D printing in general,” explains Scarbo, who has a background in welding and machining functional racing parts. “The materials available and the processes gave me a good idea of how to use those in practical applications. Now flash forward [from] 2010, and we’ve had a lot of projects in the past few years that have utilized lots of different additive manufacturing processes for specific components in low-volume race vehicles, where we have used AM parts as the end-use part. We’ve had good success with functional parts without failures.” 

But it’s been an experimental and learning process along the way. “Over the years, working on lots of projects, it takes a while to develop your thought process to see how you can utilize additive efficiently,” Scarbo says. 

He shares an example of how his company helped produce sports products for a new sensor manufacturer that focused on sports metrics. According to Scarbo, they needed urethane or silicone parts to hold the sensor to various stick sports (think hockey, golf, baseball). 

“Based on the service bureau that I worked at that was very heavy Polyjet at the time and because of the resolution and the accuracy of those parts, we were able to print very complex molds that we would inject with silicone or urethane and produce functional prototypes,” Scarbo shares. “That prototype itself was not directly printed but obviously our ability to rapidly produce a urethane prototype was all because of the 3D printed molds. That to me was one of the coolest things I had ever came across in my manufacturing life and something that gave us the ability to make a functional prototype using 3D printing as part of the process.”

Now Scarbo Performance uses a variety of additive manufacturing processes. He mentions direct metal print in aluminum for low-temperature components, 3D printing in stainless steel for direct use in exhaust systems, FDM for certain large parts, SLS for specific functional parts, SAF—a Stratasys-specific process —for certain high-detail functional parts, for resin high-detail parts Scarbo leans on Polyjet, and Z Corp in the past for full-color prototypes.

The only capability Scarbo Performance uses in-house is FDM. “The reason for that is if we need to produce something today—a fixture, jig or something tangible to hold, we have the ability to do that. FDM is relatively universal and cost-effective for that,” he shares. “Because we utilize so many different processes infrequently, it doesn’t make sense for us to own the equipment in-house. Most of the time the equipment would just sit. There are lots of service bureaus available that are able to execute parts for us in a timely manner that make it so practical that for us it doesn’t make sense to have a lot of the technologies here.”

At the AMUG Conference, Scarbo plans to share how, when, and why his company used additive manufacturing in its recent performance vehicles. He says the bulk of his speech will center some of the products Scarbo Performance has built and “successes we’ve had with additive and how we use them in our business.”

Under the Scarbo Vintage (SV) brand, his team built the SV RSR, which raced in the Pikes Peak International Hill Climb as Ken Block’s Hoonipigasus, and the SV Rover, which raced in the Baja 1000. After the Baja race, the SV Rover was converted into a street-legal Hypertruck, powered by a 1,100-horsepower supercharged V8 or a 1,000-horsepower electric drive, according to AMUG.

The SV Rover, which will be a key highlight for Scarbo at AMUG, “Is a truck we designed and built completely from scratch—every suspension part, every chassis part, every body panel,” Scarbo says. “If staring at the front of this thing, where the headlights are, there’s those little surround pieces—those are fully printed FDM.” But that’s not all—the entire grill assembly is printed FDM, the fenders on this particular truck in the photo shoot were printed FDM. On the bottom corners of the windshield are two silver metallic brackets that are directly printed aluminum. The interior door skins are completely printed. In fact, a door mockup may be on display at AMUG, according to Scarbo, who notes, “the door is one of the most intricate 3d-printed parts on the truck.”

As for the truck as a whole, “What we were trying do was put together a proof of concept and a functional prototype without having to amortize expensive tooling for a lot of these components. That’s where 3D printing is very powerful.” Scarbo says. “The material properties were strong enough; the print resolution was good enough; the tolerances were good enough to where it made it practical to do.”

“On this truck the majority of FDM parts are carbon-filled nylon,” says Scarbo, who cited his contact at Stratasys who helped enable his company to directly print parts in carbon-filled nylon that were raced on the SV Rover. “And we never had a failure. They worked flawlessly and I was blown away,” he says. “It opened my eyes to we can actually use this stuff, we can actually go test the truck. The truck you see we ended up racing later last year in a Mexico off-road endurance race. We still failed no 3D printed part. Still blows my mind.”

In his keynote, Scarbo will address why he and his company turned to additive manufacturing. “[Something] I’m going to talk about—when you get to high-level motorsport, you’re always looking for the strongest, lightest part. There’s a reason why aerospace and high-end motorport pays for very expensive tooling of carbon-fiber parts, because those parts are strong and also very light. 

“The penalty with 3D printing is typically weight. For a prototype or something you’re going to take pictures of, you’re willing to take that weight penalty for saving so much in amortized tooling costs, especially if it’s something [where you may] want to make changes. If we have no tooling costs associated with it, making a change isn’t that big a deal at that point in the process,” he says.

Other Conference Highlights

• AMUGexpo runs three nights (and a morning) during the conference with several dozen exhibitors displaying materials, systems, services and peripherals.
• AMUG hosts a technical competition (entries are accepted through March 14). The AMUG Technical Competition serves as an industry showcase of applications and finishing techniques.  cEntries will then be on display during the AMUGexpo. For more details or to submit an entry, click here.
• The conference also now hosts an annual AMUGderby; this year's event is slated for Wednesday, April 2. For rules and race procedures, click here.
• Additionally, AMUG highlights an individual annually at its Innovators Showcase, recognized in the industry as directly impacting additive manufacturing. Also, each year a number of DINO (Distinguished Innovator Operators Award) honors are given. 

Haven’t registered? You can do so here. For a sneak peek at this year’s agenda, click here.