Case Study: Richard Childress Racing achieves faster development and improved on-track performance with 3D Systems' reverse-engineering tools

3D Digital Reverse Engineering Tools Power Richard Childress' Racing Renaissance

Richard Childress Racing (RCR), riding a late-career resurgence with Kevin Harvick’s #29 contending in the Chase, faced the challenge of turning hand-crafted, time-consuming part-making and uncertain aerodynamics into a repeatable, track-specific development process. The team needed faster, more accurate ways to capture complex geometries—like cylinder heads and full body shells—and to understand why design changes affected performance week to week.

RCR adopted high-resolution laser scanning and CMM probing with Geomagic for rapid reverse engineering, feeding precise NURBS models into Pro/ENGINEER and CFD tools for simulation and optimization. What had been 40-hour hand-ported heads can now be scanned and modeled in about six hours and duplicated in minutes, while full-body scans drive CFD-tuned setups for different tracks—delivering faster development cycles, more consistent dyno results, and measurable on-track performance gains.

Richard Childress Racing

Chad Zimmer

Richard Childress Racing