RV PRO Prototyping and design Autocustom

Task: Creation of a sports fairing of a Yamaha R3 motorcycle with improved characteristics for participation in the motorcycle racing championship.

Solution: RangeVision PRO 3D scanner, ScanCenter NG software.

Summary: The RangeVision PRO industrial 3D scanner was used to digitize Yamaha R3 and R6 motorcycles. The most accurate models of serial motorcycle fairings, obtained as a result of 3D scanning, were refined by specialists using aerodynamic modeling. As a result, the Yamaha R3 sports fairing was created with improved aerodynamic characteristics, high strength and lower weight. 

How the project came about

Company Motorrika, motorcycle dealer Yamaha, planned to organize a motorcycle racing championship for its clients - the Yamaha Cup R3. The race was planned to be held in the summer of 2020.in Moscow. The organizers invited the clients to try themselves in an interesting role - to try on the role of a professional racer and participate in the fight for the title of the fastest Yamaha motorcycle racer in Moscow.

In order to bring the amateur championship closer to the professional level, it was decided to present a professional motorcycle tuning service for the race. The organizers offered all participants of the championship to upgrade the motorcycle body kit to a professional level by installing modified carbon fiber sports fairings. There were several reasons for this. Firstly, factory body kits have a lot of weight, which does not contribute to achieving high speeds on the highway. Secondly, standard plastic fairings are difficult to repair after they get damaged during races. Thirdly, it takes an indecent amount of time to remove and repair such a body kit, which makes it difficult to maintain the motorcycle as a whole. All these nuances greatly affect the results in the races. In order to enable athletes to achieve better results and enjoy more competition, they were asked to use composite sports body kits designed specifically for Yamaha motorcycles in races.

Motorrika has involved a company in this project UMATEX Rosatom which is known for the production of carbon fiber and products based on it. The company's specialists are engaged in reverse engineering, 3D modeling and manufacturing of objects from composite materials. The objective of this project was to create sports body kits for the Yamaha motorcycle range in order to increase the strength of parts and improve the aerodynamic characteristics of motorcycles. 

To complete this task, the specialists had to carry out several types of work: digitize the object and obtain its three-dimensional model, carry out aerodynamic modeling and finalize the project to the required parameters, produce a new part.

UMATEX Rosatom specialists used the RangeVision PRO industrial 3D scanner with blue backlight technology to perform 3D scanning of motorcycles. RangeVision PRO is ideally suited for solving reverse engineering problems. The scanner is designed to digitize complex objects and allows you to scan objects with a 3D resolution of up to 0.05 mm and an accuracy of up to 0.018 mm. Most importantly, the scanner allows you to obtain stable model quality in different light conditions. Taking into account all the possibilities of RangeVision PRO, UMATEX Rosatom specialists chose it.

3D scanning

The motorcycle has a complex geometry with many multidirectional elements and depressions. To speed up the process of scanning an object of this level of complexity and improve the accuracy of the data obtained, experts used markers during scanning. Despite the fact that the motorcycle is a dark, shiny object, the RangeVision PRO 3D scanner did an excellent job of scanning without using the matting spray that is usually used in such cases.

To get the maximum amount of data to create a new body kit, all motorcycles were digitized twice: with and without a fairing. This approach allows specialists to obtain the general geometry of the body, and, most importantly, the exact coordinates of the attachment points and joints of the body kit with other body elements. This data allows you to create high-precision 3D models of parts that will be ideally suited in shape, size and mounting for subsequent installation on a specific motorcycle model.

3D modeling

Having received all the necessary information, the specialists began work on aerodynamic modeling and refinement of the body kit model, taking into account the originally set goals. This included calculations to reduce air resistance in high-speed sections, as well as to reduce the weight of the structure and increase the strength of the part.

After carrying out all the necessary work, the specialists prepared the final 3D model of the new sports fairing for the Yamaha R3 motorcycle. The model was divided into several parts to carry out the production process and to carry out the subsequent assembly of the parts during installation.

Release details

The production of the new body kit included such steps as the creation of tooling, the laying of composite materials in a mold, the processing of materials by temperature and pressure, as well as the finishing of the finished part.

The snap-in was created by Picaso 3D, the largest Russian manufacturer and developer of 3D printers, known for its expertise in solving such problems. The company's specialists printed the tooling for the parts on a 3D printer. Carbon-filled FORMAX brand material was used as the raw material for the production of tooling. After the molds for the parts were ready, UMATEX Rosatom specialists laid carbon fiber layers in them and sent the parts for further processing.

Results

In this project, we can observe another example of the truly effective use of new technologies to solve problems that were previously difficult to solve in the old ways. For example, in order to get a 3D model of a motorcycle body in the old days, you would have to use an army of employees using the method of creating casts, and spend incomparably more time on this than you do now using 3D scanners. 3D scanning technology has gone far ahead and now allows us to obtain models with such accuracy that it is simply impossible to obtain in any other way. 

This is not the first time UMATEX Rosatom has used RangeVision 3D scanners in its projects, which indicates the high efficiency of their work and the high quality of the data received by specialists during scanning. In one of UMATEX's projects, Rosatom developed sports body kits for the Kawasaki Puccetti Racing motorcycle racing team, which participates in professional motorcycle racing competitions. After the team received a motorcycle with a new composite body kit, the team's pilots objectively improved their speed performance, which led to a series of brilliant victories in sports competitions in 2019-2020.