3D printed parts feeler
#141
You could prevent that in PLA by annealing it in a fixture after its printed. Every time that got really hot in the car it slightly relieved the internal stress from the differential cooling during printing. Just heat the oven up to like 150 and put some stiff metal around the cup holder and then put it in and turn the oven off and let it cool down. to room temperature.
#142
Ok, printer seems to be back up and operating. Got some prints finished this weekend and shipped.
Zephyr, Pretty much everything to recreate it, I assume the outward face is the only curved portion and the rest is a rectangular prism, in which case I really only need the main dimensions and a detailed picture of the front and side preferably with a ruler in the picture for reference.
Nile, Can I do it? Yes. Would it be a good choice? No. Head to home depot, get you one of these: https://www.homedepot.com/p/M-D-Buil...7000/100351161 and a roll of this: https://www.homedepot.com/p/Nashua-T...7792/100030120 and if you don't already have a pair, on of these to make life easier: https://www.homedepot.com/p/TEKTON-1...5104/205509387 and it you want to get fancy with it, get a roll or sheet of this: https://www.summitracing.com/parts/dei-010396 and cover every heat facing side with it. Make a cardboard template, trace the cardboard to the sheet aluminum, cut it out, seal seams with the HVAC foil tape (or rivets) and you can even mount it with the foil tape, or little L shaped brackets and rivets. Faster, easier, better.
Zephyr, Pretty much everything to recreate it, I assume the outward face is the only curved portion and the rest is a rectangular prism, in which case I really only need the main dimensions and a detailed picture of the front and side preferably with a ruler in the picture for reference.
Nile, Can I do it? Yes. Would it be a good choice? No. Head to home depot, get you one of these: https://www.homedepot.com/p/M-D-Buil...7000/100351161 and a roll of this: https://www.homedepot.com/p/Nashua-T...7792/100030120 and if you don't already have a pair, on of these to make life easier: https://www.homedepot.com/p/TEKTON-1...5104/205509387 and it you want to get fancy with it, get a roll or sheet of this: https://www.summitracing.com/parts/dei-010396 and cover every heat facing side with it. Make a cardboard template, trace the cardboard to the sheet aluminum, cut it out, seal seams with the HVAC foil tape (or rivets) and you can even mount it with the foil tape, or little L shaped brackets and rivets. Faster, easier, better.
#146
Ok, printer seems to be back up and operating. Got some prints finished this weekend and shipped.
Zephyr, Pretty much everything to recreate it, I assume the outward face is the only curved portion and the rest is a rectangular prism, in which case I really only need the main dimensions and a detailed picture of the front and side preferably with a ruler in the picture for reference.
Nile, Can I do it? Yes. Would it be a good choice? No. Head to home depot, get you one of these: https://www.homedepot.com/p/M-D-Buil...7000/100351161 and a roll of this: https://www.homedepot.com/p/Nashua-T...7792/100030120 and if you don't already have a pair, on of these to make life easier: https://www.homedepot.com/p/TEKTON-1...5104/205509387 and it you want to get fancy with it, get a roll or sheet of this: https://www.summitracing.com/parts/dei-010396 and cover every heat facing side with it. Make a cardboard template, trace the cardboard to the sheet aluminum, cut it out, seal seams with the HVAC foil tape (or rivets) and you can even mount it with the foil tape, or little L shaped brackets and rivets. Faster, easier, better.
Zephyr, Pretty much everything to recreate it, I assume the outward face is the only curved portion and the rest is a rectangular prism, in which case I really only need the main dimensions and a detailed picture of the front and side preferably with a ruler in the picture for reference.
Nile, Can I do it? Yes. Would it be a good choice? No. Head to home depot, get you one of these: https://www.homedepot.com/p/M-D-Buil...7000/100351161 and a roll of this: https://www.homedepot.com/p/Nashua-T...7792/100030120 and if you don't already have a pair, on of these to make life easier: https://www.homedepot.com/p/TEKTON-1...5104/205509387 and it you want to get fancy with it, get a roll or sheet of this: https://www.summitracing.com/parts/dei-010396 and cover every heat facing side with it. Make a cardboard template, trace the cardboard to the sheet aluminum, cut it out, seal seams with the HVAC foil tape (or rivets) and you can even mount it with the foil tape, or little L shaped brackets and rivets. Faster, easier, better.
#147
Science, First one should go on the printer today, just got caught up
Zephyr, Thanks man, I'll check them out and see what I can do. I kind of figured it would be a bit of a pain, things like that are deceptively simple until you try to recreate it.
Brainz, finished your cruise plugs, slide in them DM's
Zephyr, Thanks man, I'll check them out and see what I can do. I kind of figured it would be a bit of a pain, things like that are deceptively simple until you try to recreate it.
Brainz, finished your cruise plugs, slide in them DM's
#148
Just a heads up for future orders, I'm running low on black filament so I'm using up some of my other colors. I assume most of you will do some sort of finishing to the parts anyway, but if you plan to leave the parts as they come and would prefer a specific color, let me know otherwise you'll get whichever color happens to be on the reel. (currently orange)
#151
Shamrock, can do, your cupholder is on next
Monk, I appreciate the pictures man!
Pretty sure I've been responding to everyone, but I feel like I'm forgetting stuff so I'm going to try to go through this whole thread again and get a list of all the parts y'all want and jam out some designs. I'm leaving for another trip from Aug 2nd to 13th, this time I'll be completely off the grid. Printer is still working overtime and I appreciate all of your patience. This corvette style cupholder is a 40+ hour print for instance, so I promise I'm not being lazy or ignoring y'all, just the constraints of the technology.
Monk, I appreciate the pictures man!
Pretty sure I've been responding to everyone, but I feel like I'm forgetting stuff so I'm going to try to go through this whole thread again and get a list of all the parts y'all want and jam out some designs. I'm leaving for another trip from Aug 2nd to 13th, this time I'll be completely off the grid. Printer is still working overtime and I appreciate all of your patience. This corvette style cupholder is a 40+ hour print for instance, so I promise I'm not being lazy or ignoring y'all, just the constraints of the technology.
#152
Been a while, so here's an update:
Did some volunteering in the Montana backcountry clearing trails
Came back and completely disassembled the printer, reassembled, updated firmware, migrated software, multiple testing iterations to get it printing right again.
Some thoughts:
I'm going to scale back my offerings. Everything will still be available as custom pieces, but honestly some of these parts aren't worth printing. I know everyone loves the cupholder idea, but its like a 45 hour print and I charge $20 plus shipping, so profit is on the order of $10 bucks, or about 22 cents an hour. I'll be focusing on parts that fit my printer better and that I can print higher quality. (a cupholder on my best quality takes over 140 hours.)
Cam seal and crank seal tools now available:
$5 and $10 respectively
Did some volunteering in the Montana backcountry clearing trails
Came back and completely disassembled the printer, reassembled, updated firmware, migrated software, multiple testing iterations to get it printing right again.
Some thoughts:
I'm going to scale back my offerings. Everything will still be available as custom pieces, but honestly some of these parts aren't worth printing. I know everyone loves the cupholder idea, but its like a 45 hour print and I charge $20 plus shipping, so profit is on the order of $10 bucks, or about 22 cents an hour. I'll be focusing on parts that fit my printer better and that I can print higher quality. (a cupholder on my best quality takes over 140 hours.)
Cam seal and crank seal tools now available:
$5 and $10 respectively
#156
:
Some thoughts:
I'm going to scale back my offerings. Everything will still be available as custom pieces, but honestly some of these parts aren't worth printing. I know everyone loves the cupholder idea, but its like a 45 hour print and I charge $20 plus shipping, so profit is on the order of $10 bucks, or about 22 cents an hour. I'll be focusing on parts that fit my printer better and that I can print higher quality. (a cupholder on my best quality takes over 140 hours.)
Some thoughts:
I'm going to scale back my offerings. Everything will still be available as custom pieces, but honestly some of these parts aren't worth printing. I know everyone loves the cupholder idea, but its like a 45 hour print and I charge $20 plus shipping, so profit is on the order of $10 bucks, or about 22 cents an hour. I'll be focusing on parts that fit my printer better and that I can print higher quality. (a cupholder on my best quality takes over 140 hours.)
I did this with my DIY OLED console gauges, mostly to see what they'd look like in Nylon (vs the PLA I use at home).
The nylon versions were a little tighter so a I assume that they annealed the gauges afterwards which caused them to shrink a little.
It wasn't as expensive as I'd feared (in Australia's small market, doing this type of thing tends to be very expensive since there's little demand) but the finish was superb and required no additional work (the nylon has a very matt finish).
My PLA versions looked like dodgy prototypes compared to the finish of the nylon versions (I needed to spend a lot of time with wet&dry paper on the PLA gauge face to give it a smooth finish - the rest of the gauge I don't care about since it's not visible when installed in the instrument cluster).
This WILL make the pieces more expensive but requires no more effort on your part other than to send the order with your model attached and there's no wear&tear on your printer or time needed by you for each print.
Do some investigation on this, get some quotes and forum feedback to see if the extra cost is still acceptable to people.
You don't have a commercial-grade printer so it won't hold up to continuous printing - use it for prototype work.