What kind of gauges are those? Very Knight Rider.

 

One of them fancy PLX devices I think.

 

I guess if you look closely you can see it says PLX. Haha, guess I just need to open my eyes. Looks like the DM-100 or the DM-200 from what I found on the PLX website. Those are very cool. I wonder how they would work with a megasquirt?

 

I saw some people requested to edit my original cad file on my google drive share. I forgot to make it public so I just changed the permissions fyi and it should be editable now.

 

DM-100s from before they made them OBDII direct play. If the megasquirt will output OBDII information then it will work. These gauges were built with the individual senders, making the install a bit more complicated. Install starts at post 53 in my build thread.

 

This? (Although this is an NA)

 

That one. I couldn't remember if it was NA or NB. Anyone familiar enough with the inside of the NB cluster to know if the first method described will work on those cars?

 

I was drawing a blank for a bit on something miata related to 3D print when it finally came to me today. I have been researching casting of silver and other metals with the intent of designing and casting my own badging for my car. 3D printing would be an awesome way to make a master to cast off of!

*off to rhino to fiddle with 3D files...*

 

Phil - Just ordered one of these to speed up our prototyping process for some upcoming products - How's it treating you so far? I've been told results are of gear-meshable quality?

Not certain that's something that will be useful at any point but it should serve us well before I send out Alias drawings to be milled. Turn around time is just too long, even from local rapid prototyping services.

 

Having some time with it now I have to say it's like one of those things that has endless possibility but is very limited at the same time. I can't describe it well. But like I find myself very limited by my own skill level which kind of breaks my moral with doing things. It's just going to take time but it's just one more thing I have to invest time in to really get the full usefulness out of it.

Product-wise, I know there is a lot in the media these day's about makerbot being dicks. But the replicator 2 has been pretty solid and I have not ran into any issues with it yet other than sometimes it's kind of difficult to remove prints from the base without damaging the print or the base.

It is the perfect solution for rapid-prototyping of things. If I have an idea for something I can design it, print it and see if it works.

One thing that is my own fault, I was hoping to be able to do a few things under the hood of a car with it. But I've come to find out my replicator 2 does not print abs plastic and just uses the makerbot filament. I was under the assumption it did either or. The makerbot filament cannot withstand high temperature verses abs plastic so it kind of kills making anything to use under the hood of a car. I mean you still could use it to do so, but don't expect the item to hold up to the heat for long. I wanted to make my own catchcan to custom fit my engine bay, I still might, but I'd have to design it, see if it fits, then send the design off to be made out of higher grade materials in order to actually use it. Which I guess will work, but I was just under the wrong assumptions.

For right now I've just been finding all sorts of interesting things on Thingverse to print and trying out different print settings like infill and resolution and scale etc. I've been slowly working on my gauge faceplate for NB center consoles.

Trying to work on a bezel of sorts for the gauge angle.

 

I see - The unit I purchased is a dual Extruder that supports ABS and PLA.

PLA will probably be best for us as we need the items to be firm at room temperature and don't necessarily need the prototypes to operate at higher temps. I think overall it will drastically speed up product development.

I anticipate simple items like this will come out great for a mock-up status.

 

I updated my previous post lol


But yeah the PLA filament will work fine for the most part. Something like that would print just fine. Maybe add a raft for it to print on so it doesn't move when printing. Another thing I just thought of is sometimes with longer prints, the filament warps slightly at the base. I've had a few corners of objects come out slightly malformed due to the base cooling off too fast etc. I've heard things like that can be cured with heated base plates etc.

 

 

Well, that didn't take long



But seriously, how are the 3D printing shenanigans going?

 

...lol

Recently 3D printed a 12 tooth trigger wheel for the ATi dampers we sell. The build plate was just a bit too small and the first run resulted in the edges drooping over as the PLA cooled. I ended up adding some width to the build plate with some old expired credit cards before covering the entire thing in fresh painters tape. Worked out great!

 

Do you expect the plate to hold up to use in an engine bay?

 

I expect the 3D print will only serve as a rapid prototype to test fitment and nothing more, as it is quite possible that the non-ferrous PLA plastic won't work with the Hall Effect sensor.

 

Hahah ...Strangest thing.. Installed the bright green PLA trigger wheel and NOTHING.

Yes, it was just to properly scale it to our ATi Dampers before I send the file off to be machined.