3D printed stuff

[Mossberg]

I have managed to get myself a 3D printer and would like to print some things that will hopefully be OK for the Defender.  I got it on a bit of a whim so didn't really have anything in mind, so now I am looking at stuff to print.

So have you folks printed stuff for your vehicle or indeed other related items.

My thoughts are:

Parts for inside - the dash, centre console, switch and gauge housings, in the back and tub areas  and on doors etc.

Exterior parts such as trim pieces, light surrounds, on the bodywork/bumpers etc.

Underneath and inside the engine bay. Thinking of things like caps and bungs, brackets and clips, etc.

Tools. Things to help seat seals etc.

Toolbox and garage.  Storage solutions, specific tool storage or gear tidies etc.

It would be good to know what you have done, if it's been successful and indeed if its been unsuccessful as that may save it lot of grief in repeating things that don't work.

Is there anywhere that shares files for prints? It seems pointless trying to design and draw something that has already been successfully done.

I don't want the printer sitting idle, especially as I don't have a particular project in mind. 

Things I'm am currently thinking of doing are;

Caps over the bumper fixings.

Bungs for where the wiring loom came out of the chassis. 

Mobile phone support to fit into the ashtray area on the dash.

The centre panel on the dash (the one with the cigarette lighter socket and wiper switch) to include extra items.

Looking forward to seeing what you have done. 

ATB.

Mick

[elbekko]

Just don't do it out of PLA if it'll be in the sunlight and/or heat.

I've printed a tablet holder and a power panel for my P38.

[Mossberg]

15 minutes ago, elbekko said:

Just don't do it out of PLA if it'll be in the sunlight and/or heat.

I've printed a tablet holder and a power panel for my P38.

My thoughts are to print from PETG, but I am new to this so the advice is welcome. I would appreciate comments on what to do and not what to do. This is a big learning curve for me and I need to understand the materials, the printer and the software, so hopefully with input from experienced folk I can progress the right way.

[elbekko]

PETG should be ok.

Good luck with your love/hate relationship with your printer.

[Mudmonkey]

I've done a few bits myself, centre dash binnacle to take 3x 52mm gauges and speaker rings I think are the only land rover related bits I've done but I've also made various bits to tidy up the garage, tool holders etc and other bits for my mini project.

There's plenty available on https://www.thingiverse.com/  but a lot of the stuff is so specific that its usually quicker to redraw it yourself how you want it.

[tommobot]

What size / how expensive is a reasonable printer to be actually useful for printing the sort of bits you are thinking?

Material wise what sort of cost are you looking at per print for instance?  - Say something like some sort of ashtray insert..

[Blanco]

I have been wondering whether to get one as well, .... seems you can get quite a capable machine for around £400 which can do about 200mm cubed or shapes within. Rolls of filament vary depending on quality and material, but around £30,  I guess '£ per print ' depends a bit on how many tries it takes before you get a result you are happy with, it seems there are several variables to tweak, and almost immediately it seems that people feel the need to modify and upgrade various elements to address their own needs. Sounds a lot like Land Rover ownership!  Two things occur, ... in the current Winter weather it would be nicer to play indoors sometimes. .... and It could end up costing more than you think!  Key to real success will be the ability to model your own stuff and that is my own current stumbling block.

[FridgeFreezer]

I've got a very old and somewhat shonky 3D printer (RepRap Ormerod 2, as briefly sold by RS I believe), and work now has a very nice Prusa i3 Mk3s which is just leaps and bounds ahead - it's pricey (~£750 in kit form ~£900 assembled) but seeing how well it prints & how reliable it is I've been seriously tempted. I've eyed up the cheaper printers but I'm very wary of just buying problems that the Prusa solves.

I recently printed a few bits for the 109 - 52mm gauge blank to hold a switch and a couple of other little bits - and probably wasted half a day just getting the printer to behave itself rather than trying to break itself or create a giant bowl of plastic noodles (which set me on the path of staring longingly at the Prusa website while my credit card cowered in the corner!)

When it prints right, it's pretty good and perfectly acceptable for bits & bobs like brackets, stands, holders, etc. but not exactly showroom finish.

Side-by-side Benchy prints below, the black one is my old Ormerod and the silver one is the Prusa (not even in high-quality mode). Goes to show what a decade or so of R&D will do - in addition the Prusa is really just plug & play out of the box, the homing/bed levelling is now a solved problem and the flexi spring steel bed works beautifully.

I'm hoping @TSD will join in this thread as he's 3D printed quite a few bits for his truck including engine-bay stuff (air intake for heater springs to mind), a form for pressing a complex shape into ali for the fuel filler cowling, and (IIRC) some moulds for casting polyeurethane parts which have worked spectacularly well.

[landroversforever]

@FridgeFreezer I recognise that test file.... and raise you a slightly larger one....

[landroversforever]

Big thing I'd mention is don't assume more expensive = better. My current department has a whole fleet, some of which are about the £400 mark (can't remember the model) and some are a much more expensive (£1500 or more from memory) Witbox ones. The £400 ones are FAR superior print quality. So have a look through reviews and look at the quality of the prints coming off the other end. The department has also just bought one of the conveyor type printers too. So it can either print multiples and they pile off the end or with the right support, endless length.

[TSD]

I don't know what you (or possibly I ) have done to that poor Ormerod. It's capable of much better prints than that, though granted not as good as the Prusa. Also keep in mind it's very far from standard - not sure if I made it better or worse in the end

My current printer is a home built CoreXY design, with a 300 x 300 x 300 build envelope. I built it because I wanted a larger build platform, and I wanted to use slightly more exotic materials.

I rarely print stuff that is in plain view, so I tend to focus more on structure than appearance. (Also I always seem to end up printing in black, which doesn't photograph easily!) Also, often the 3d print is a means to an end, not the end in itself - a useful way to create tools or jigs.

Here's the air intake that Fridge mentioned. This was an experiment is many ways - I was learning Fusion360, trying out nylon as a material, dialling in the new printer and working out  details for 2Bex build. It fits behind the nearside front wheelarch, using the standard LR vent shape. This one is, I think, Taulman Alloy 910 (nylon), but the final fitted art is in PETG, encapsulated with Polyester fibreglass resin, which makes it stupidly rigid and has a smooth surface so hopefully it won't instantly turn green like most of the Land Rovers in my garden.

 

I'll try to find some more pics of other stuff.

[FridgeFreezer]

17 minutes ago, TSD said:

I don't know what you (or possibly I ) have done to that poor Ormerod. It's capable of much better prints than that

It is - that was just the one that fell to hand... its current "thing" seems to be completely failing to detect the bed and crashing the head into it during homing, or just failing to home, or homing in thin air above the bed so the print never sticks... once it's printing it's pretty acceptable but the faffing about has made me want to launch it through the window a few times

By comparison, the Prusa with the spring steel bed & inductive height sensor is just so effortless it's sickening. I'm being sorely tempted to buy a bed & sensor, but it's a slippery slope to Trigger's Broom

[TSD]

Printing moulds for casting polyurethane resin has been very successful. It all started because I couldn't find a nice mount for the LED NAS lamps for the back of 2Bex. The standard pedestal doesn't fit the lamps I have without cutting a lot of plastic, and I wanted a lower profile mount in any case. The usual kit car solution for this sort of thing seems to be to wrap a length of P shape extrusion around the lamp. I figured that for about the same price, I could just buy polyurethane casting resin and do something that felt a bit nicer....

 

After a couple of false starts. it worked out quite nicely, and I had loads of resin left over, that I had to find a use for...

Those nasty demister grommets in the Defender dash tray, that are always split and rotten?

 

The finish looks poor here, because both the part and the mould are covered in release wax and bits of paper towel. The mould is in 3 parts, to form the undercut for the grommet lip.

[Gazzar]

That's fantastic stuff, hugely in awe of the quality and versatility of the technology, and the idea of printing stuff as a mold is amazing. Watching with interest.

 

Ye are so skilled. Very impressed.

 

[TSD]

Lots of very simple tooling has been made along the way. Clutch alignment tools, oil seal setting drifts, that kind of thing.

I've never owned a clutch alignment tool, it's always been bits of broom handle, old sockets and gaffer tape. One afternoon, putting (yet another) Tdi into (yet another) Land Rover, a little light bulb came on. Went home for tea with a few measurements in my pocket, came back the next morning with a perfectly sized alignment tool.

One that sticks in the mind was an expanding plug that fits into a brake caliper piston. Probably wouldn't work on a used one, but it made it very simple to swap all the pistons for stainless on a cheap set of new calipers. Drop it into the piston, wind in the bolt, pull out the piston No seal replacement required, and a perfect, unmarked set of mild steel pistons on the shelf ready for some future breakdown. Very simple, but oddly satisfying.

[Mossberg]

Some great replies folks, thanks. 

The printer is indeed a Prusa and I know people say you can get cheaper but I didn't want to get something that sat and collected dust due to me not being able to get it working. I borrowed a Prusa Mk2.5 a few years ago and that worked well so didn't want to risk a different one. 

I enjoyed building the printer and at least you do get some insight into how it works. 

Some great prints there and the idea of the mold is great.

I do need to order some PETG, but the priority needs to be to relearn the software. 

Keep the photos of the parts coming in, they are inspiring and informative. 

[FridgeFreezer]

I didn't 3D print them but it would be very doable to 3D print Project Binky style wire/hose clamp brackets - in fact it would be super doable to write a little parametric script in OpenSCAD to generate them automatically from a given list of cable/pipe sizes and the like. It's a small thing but does make a difference in keeping stuff tidy.

[Mossberg]

I think it's bits like this that will be good to print. Being able to tailer parts for your needs will be good.

If its possible to make simple clips etc then it will hopefully save lots of trying to find small parts then paying for postage etc. 

[western]

We do have a CAD Archive within the Tools & Fabrication forum 

https://forums.lr4x4.com/forum/26-cad-archive/

[simonr]

I've printed quite a lot of car bits!

Early prints, in ordinary (cheap) PLA generally melted / deformed due to the heat from the sun shining on them.

I printed a few things in ABS, PETG, Polycarbonate - but the results are rarely as good as PLA.  Then I discovered PolyMax PLA which has really good structural properties and doesn't seem to suffer as badly (barely at all) from deformation when used for exterior parts.

Where I want something to be waterproof / very strong / rigid / high temperature -  I soak it in fibreglass resin.  Results have been really good.  You need to use a resin which cures as slowly as possible to give it time to soak in properly.  2-part polycarbonate resin works well too. 

I printed this last week - to fit my dash-cam to the RR.  I got tired of the suction cup on the windscreen falling off.  The corrugated bit jams between the headlining & roof.  The original nut that screwed the ball into the suction mount screws on to the threaded bit.  Works pretty well.

This was a printed electric bike drive & battery holder.  The swing-arm with the motor was resin filled PLA to make it more rigid.

Part of the dashboard on my DIY Electric Polaris General.

I use the printer all the time - and I've never printed a 'mini yoda'!

 

[FridgeFreezer]

49 minutes ago, simonr said:

and I've never printed a 'mini yoda'!

I imagine you have better sources for those if you need them?

[simonr]

😉

[TSD]

Realised I forgot to dig out any pics of using the 3d printer for press tooling. This is early days for me in undertsandng what I'm doing, but I've been quite happy with the results so far. Looking online, a lot of people have got away with using just printed tooling, and accepting that it doesn't last long. That worked ok, but for larger pieces I found I needed more rigid dies. So I printed them as hollow parts - the usual 3d printed shell, with some percentage of infill, but with the reverse face open. Also need to choose the infill pattern to ensure the back can be filled easily. To fill the die, I used a mix of ebays cheapest possible polyester resin, and a carefully curated mix of small pebbles, chalky soil and metal filings... OK  I swept the workshop floor, picked out the big lumps and threw the rest into the die as I poured in the resin I could come up with lots of sound arguments about the strength of infill materials of random grain size, but basically nothing is much cheaper than the **** off of the workshop floor, and it means you need less resin. Once it's gone off, it's really, properly, stiff and strong.

This one I made to fold a flat strip of ali to form a rain gutter on the bulkhead of 2Bex. (On the Ibex, the gutter is below the bonnet line instead of above, presumably to keep the smooth flowing lines of the body ). It would have been much easier with a bit sheet folder, but I don't have one and didn't fancy trying to make one.

 

(The sharp eyed will notice the final part doesn't quite match the die. I put the final return lip and the joggle in afterwards.) This tool showed almost no wear after making three full lengths of gutter - 1 practice piece, 1 final piece, and then a second final piece after I cut the first one 20mm too short

One of the first things I made with this printer was press tool for a fuel filler mount, because I didn't like any of the options I found to buy off the shelf. I've long since chucked the die, but heres a cut from the CAD design, and the final pressed part. It took a few tries to get it right, and it still required some rework by hand, but I was quite happy with the result.

      

 

I did originally print the filler dish in Carbon Fibre loaded Nylon. It looked great, and was very stiff and strong, but I couldn't shake the feeling that one day, after a year or two of having diesel dripped over it, I'd shove the filler nozzle in and the whole lot would fall apart. I left a test piece soaking in diesel for a few months, and it seemed fine to be honest, but it just didn't convince me for some reason. Also, I failed to get paint to stick to it reliably

Actually, I did find one filler dish from a US company that I liked, made in diecast ali, perfect size and shape, and very reasonably priced. Sadly when I queried the cost for them to put it in a small carboard box and post it to the UK, they apparently thought I wanted a custom made, solid 24ct gold version, and none of their resellers that I tried would ship internationally.

[elbekko]

9 hours ago, TSD said:

I did originally print the filler dish in Carbon Fibre loaded Nylon. It looked great, and was very stiff and strong, but I couldn't shake the feeling that one day, after a year or two of having diesel dripped over it, I'd shove the filler nozzle in and the whole lot would fall apart. I left a test piece soaking in diesel for a few months, and it seemed fine to be honest, but it just didn't convince me for some reason. Also, I failed to get paint to stick to it reliably

Coating it in some sort of resin would probably fix that?

[TSD]

If I was to do it again, I would print it in PETG or PETT and encapsulate it in polyester resin. I know that works and makes strong parts. I'd also try to add a texture to the surface to help the resin bind to it. But fibreglass resin doesn't bond well to the CF-Nylon. I found it looks great, until the first flex, then it break up and flakes off. I tried a few different rattlecan coatings from the shelf, hoping I'd find something that worked, but no joy.

There's also the issue that printing large parts in CF-Nylon gets expensive very quickly, as the filament is costly and it's fairly hard to print to there's lost of wastage.