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Printed Intake

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    Printed Intake

    Hello!

    Newbie 3D printer guy here! I'm looking for some advice and maybe direction on where I'm going wrong with a recent project I'm working on.

    I'll keep the story short here; I was looking to buy an intake for my car. I couldn't get passed the crazy price tag of an aftermarket tube to replace my factory pipe and air box.. so, I decided to create something myself!

    So, I came up with the first photo below. This was printed from Nylon by shapeways. The part works as it should and shapeways did a very good job printing it.

    Fast forward a year, I was given a JGAurora A5s. I've successfully printed many things, boxes, benchys, dogs, many other unnecessary items. I decided to try and print the intake myself and the results are shown in the second and third picture. The tubes have a lot of distortion and wavyness to them. As the printer goes around the tube it seems to stutter and it really shows in the surface finish. I've tried to slow the print, change acceleration values enable jerk control (LOL) and even adjust the model. Only printing the intake in the vertical direction (so it's making circles instead of lines) does it have distortion.

    Any idea of what I could try to improve the finish?

    On another note; material choice. The black material is bigrep HT. It's claimed to have higher temp resistance before softening (they say 120C). I have found in my own testing it starts to get soft around 170F, far below where I would like it to be for an underhood application. My printer nossle only gets up to 245C so that really limits me from using PETGs. Any advice for a robust and higher temperature resistance material which can be printed at lower temps? Seems like PLA and ABS are my only options.

    Thanks for any feedback!

    Oh and I included a picture of the application as well . My V60RD.

    #2
    Nice Volvo! I'm not sure what plastics you will find that print at lower temperatures and can do underhood temperatures. I'm working on an intake component that is after the throttle body and will see ~14 psi of boost. Since it may be in contact from reversion fuel and I'm running high ethanol levels, there weren't many plastics that fit the criteria. Polycarbonate does, but you need 290C+ to print with a 110C+ heated bed. I printed a prototype in a polycarbonate blend at those temperatures, but since it is a blend it also softens around 175F. When I print my 3rd version in a few days, I'll be using glass reinforced Nylon (PA6-GF30) which also has the chemical resistance and temperature rating (up to 150C in-use) that I am looking for. It should print at slightly lower temperatures: 260-280C and 60-75C.

    Just a guess, but maybe the controller is not keeping up with the rate that the G code needs to be read and planned for when doing arcs (which get turned into small straight lines by the slicer.) It would be some work, but you could move to a different controller, fixing the distortion and also enabling higher temperatures. An e3d all metal hot end and a controller would be < $100.

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