Building Cars in a "Super Printing Factory"

The China FAW Additive Manufacturing Innovation Center was officially inaugurated in August 2026, becoming China's first additive technology platform focused on automotive applications. The center is equipped with 43 machines operating 24 hours a day, covering metal printing and stereolithography processes, and can produce 19,000 parts per year in batches, spanning the full business chain from design styling reviews and R&D validation prototypes to small-batch part production, tooling and auxiliary fixtures, and personalized custom products. FAW's additive manufacturing efforts began in 2019 with the introduction of its first machine, and by 2022 the equipment fleet had expanded from 4 to more than 20 machines. The center's team has mastered 8 processes, with members specializing in materials, mechanical engineering, vehicles, design, and other fields, all of whom must gain hands-on proficiency through job rotation. Issues encountered in print trials, such as microcracks, material porosity, and shrinkage cavities, are being avoided by predicting crack locations through structural stress simulation and process forming simulation at the data design stage. The team also collaborates with Jilin University, Harbin Institute of Technology, and Xi'an Jiaotong University on technology cooperation and talent development. In terms of production applications, FAW applied additive manufacturing processes to volume vehicle production as early as 2020, and Hongqi is one of the few domestic automotive brands to achieve mass-production implementation of this technology. In practice, the team consolidated 52 parts of the front cabin and subframe into 4 parts, reducing total part weight from 74 kg to 57.7 kg while increasing system stiffness to 1.16 times its original value. The 13 categories and 64 full-color parts used in the restoration of two classic Hongqi models, the CA770JH and CA771, are produced by the center; the Hongqi Golden Sunflower series interior solution combines additive printing with leather wrapping, cutting overall production costs by 50% compared with traditional tooling-based production.