The interest of Lamborghini in components made with the rapid prototyping technology has found its origin in requirement of solving the problem for immediate delivery of 100 Gallardo’s model to the first dealers and customers, the pre-production models.

The RP materials available on the market until that moment didn’t reach the minimum mechanic and thermal properties that those application was requiring: once painted the part had to be fitted directly on the car.
Considering that the Gallardo can easily reach 300 km per hour and has to resist at every climatic condition, both in winter (-20°C) and in summer (+50/60°C), rain, hail, snow or sun, the challenge was very exiting. They asked for a consulting and the suggestion was laser sintering and hi-performance materials.
At the beginning of 2003 the most appropriate material was the Windform PRO, aluminium and glass filled, granular and flat. The part has then been produced in Windform XT, carbon fibre filled material: the tests made on the first and then on the second have underlined a good increase in performance with the carbon fibre filled, so we suppose that if at that time the carbon fiber filled material had been used, the performance would have been higher. Despite this, the Windform PRO pieces didn’t have any problem.

The components made from injection moulding used previously weren’t suitable for this first phase.
For this reason the particular was still at a non definitive definition and presented some showy defects, from project and process.

Once assembled in its closed position there was an evident discontinuity with the rest of the bodywork (hood, bumper and lateral body): the external surface had a different shape in respect to the hood and front headlight’s design.
Moreover, in open position, the inner structure presented some imperfections due to shrinkage of the injection moulding causing defects also on the upper external part: the design wasn’t by then still not optimized for this kind of technology.