See How An American Makes McLaren W1 Suspension Parts

The McLaren W1 will be the next flagship supercar for the British automaker, and it will undoubtedly be a point of pride for people in the UK. Americans can have some pride in it, too, because key suspension components come from a company called Divergent Technologies, Inc. The reason is that Divergent is able to create some seriously complex and highly-optimized parts that not many others can do. To show off those parts, McLaren put together a video visiting Divergent's California factory to show how they're made, and it's pretty cool.

There are two main pieces to Divergent's advanced part production pie, as Chief Programs and Operations Officer Cooper Keller explains in the video. On the design side, the company has AI that helps figure out where and how material can be removed to make a part as light as possible. So, once McLaren and Divergent know what the space restrictions and strength requirements are, they can let the AI sort out how to make it light. This is part of why the parts look really strange. Material is only left where it's absolutely needed, and the AI doesn't worry too much about shapes that are easy to produce.

That brings us to the other piece: 3D printing. The components that Divergent produces are mainly the control arms, and they're entirely printed from metal. The process used is laser powder-bed fusion, and it uses high-powered lasers to weld together metal alloy powder layer by layer. Like with other 3D-printing processes, this method means that components can be shaped in ways that would be impossible, or just even more cost-prohibitive with more conventional manufacturing processes like casting or stamping.

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Obviously, this process isn't as cheap or as fast as more conventional methods of manufacturing, but it works great for something like the W1, which is a pricey, low-production vehicle. As Keller also explains, this method makes it so that if McLaren wants to make some changes, it's very easy to implement them, as it doesn't require any changes to tooling such as molds or stamping dies.

Divergent is also designing and manufacturing parts for other car companies. One that helped bring Divergent into the public eye was Czinger. One of the major parts it creates for the supercar builder is called the BrakeNode, which combines parts such as the steering knuckle, brake caliper mount, and even brake lines into one giant piece. The idea is that combining all those components into one part can save weight and even function better than they would separately. Even Bugatti is working with Divergent, and some Divergent parts will appear in the Tourbillon supercar. It's pretty cool that some American ingenuity is helping bring the world's greatest supercars to reality.

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