3D printing parts

[Colin Aitchison]

Sitting in the office watching F1 at Silverstone practice 3, bored and needing something to do, now I can post photos again I had a flash of inspiration, I thought why not start a post on 3D printing, mmmm, where to start, a the beginning of course. Christmas 2016, big box below the tree from a very close friend, to Colin on the tag, with the word "enjoy", and within the box a flat pack 3D printer, 6 hours latter up and running, was even late for Christmas dinner, as if you would believe that. As my work as a designer uses AutoCAD a drawing program I normally use in 2D format to jump to 3D was not a problem but had its challenges, the saying that I have employed is "if I can draw it I can print it, maybe". Below is a washer or packer if you like ID 30mm OD 49mm THK 3.8mm 16 minuets to print at a cost of 4p of PLA.



Clutch aliment tool for B2 coupe and Ur quattro.



Single port inlet manifold for 7A engine, don't think this will work fitted to a hot engine but as an exercise of drawing and printing was well worth the time and effort.





Another inlet port with fuel injector hole.



I have this in mild steel 4mm plate with 76mm tube welded on as an adapter to fit a cone air filter onto the 20v 7A air flow mass meter but thought this might be a little lighter.



Window lifter motor wire wheel, this is not tested in car yet but don't see any problems apart from wear, I also have new steel wire and crimps to fit as well.







In the image above you can see there is four semi circular groves in the wheel, I would like to try this with three groves and the spacer between the wire groves would be higher to eliminate the steel wire from stepping over the other wires and locking the motor up or wearing through the wire as it turns to operate the window, but the friction on the wire round the wheel may need to be four turns for the motor to lift the window.

Any one who has refilled the coolant of any 5 cylinder engine will know the frustration of about the last liter of coolant take for ever (about half a mouth of spit at a time) and you always over fill the expansion bottle and end up with a puddle on the floor, this took 6Hr to print, it dose have a thread on the bottom and as you can see I fitted a black O ring before
I screwing it on to make it water tight.



I do have more 3D printed bits and bobs on the coupe GT but it is in my mum garage, I have tried trim clips and square plastic plugs to take screws and have had various success,
Any way keep you posted how printing goes.

[John.]

Interesting stuff Colin. Great for static parts like the coolant filler, as you say heat and physical wear could be an issue..........but if it's NLA then a printed part is 100 times better than a broken part?!

Carry on

[Colin Aitchison]

Hi John,
You have had the parts in you hand and they look ok, but any moving part will wear, as for the fixed part that are NLA or hard to get the choice for me is simple, the round washer or spacer in the first photo is now fitted to the S2 as a spacer and only time will tell if it is up to the job.

[vorsprung durch technik]

Amazing stuff this and right up my street as i studied Design and Technology at college but sadly couldn't follow my dream. You mentioned Window lifter wheel wear. I've just had some rear cupholder brackets made for the A2 as they're nla and the plastic used is light blue and incredibly tough. So reading your piece and trying to leave a tooth imprint into my printed brackets leaves me to believe it will break my teath trying. Are there different strengths of plastic used in printing? What branch of design are you in?

[Colin Aitchison]

vorsprung durch technik,
Yes there is a few, PLA is the easiest to use and setup ABS is very hard but hard to print with,
there are a few really flexible compounds, I do drawings for Building Warrant and Planning Permissions.

[vorsprung durch technik]

Thanks Colin,i'm guessing my brackets are made of the strong stuff then. I don't know about you but i found Technical Drawing a beautiful subject at school, it's a shame there's no need for it today.

Cheers Mark.

[sinbin5t]

That is superb ! I can only see this getting better and better

Well done Collin !

[Ringmaster]

What sorcery is this?

I look forward to what else (good) technology will offer us.

Nice work.

[SwallownAmazon]

You'll be making 7A distributor drive gears from Nylon 12 (I believe that's what was used) next!

Superb.

[Jake Blight]

A lot of calls over the years looking for b2 coupe sunvisor clips. Not cheap on eBay and not that cheap been if bought from abroad. I don't need any but you might like to consider it as a viable profit making exercise.