The use of 3D printing in the repair and tuning of cars

Automotive themes familiar and close to many. We love to look at beautiful and fast cars, and some lucky ones drive such cars or create them.

Today we will talk about the use of 3D printing technology and 3D scanning in the automotive industry.

We will not consider ambitious and controversial projects of car printing companies as a whole, but consider a simpler and more accessible application of this technology.


Printing worn or broken parts made of plastics
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Customers repeatedly make orders for the printing of plugs on rims with a unique emblem or for a replacement lost. Also, people are looking for a replacement of worn gears in the drive window regulators or elements of the sled hatch.

Part of the mount for janitors



Similar units, installed in many expensive cars, are often sold complete with the remaining units, a kind of module. Of course, these parts can not be cheap, and in this case, 3D printing technology is excellent for solving the problem.

Disk cover


Nissan interior trim clip


Plugs for rims Work Equip


Bushes on the car


It is worth mentioning that not all parts can be printed on a conventional 3D printer without soluble supports due to the complex geometry of the model. A printed model can have many thin elements that can break during printing or direct operation. The benefit of such details is the overwhelming minority and they are extremely rare.

All that you need to carry out such orders:

• Inexpensive 3D printer capable of printing ABS and Nylon plastics. It goes without saying that it is properly tuned and calibrated.
  
  
• Knowledge and ability to work in any of the programs of three-dimensional modeling. CAD systems such as SolidWorks, Autodesk Inventor or Compass are best suited for modeling technical models. With an adequate level of knowledge of the 3D editor, the modeling time takes no more than an hour.

Printing decorative elements and body elements that do not carry a heavy load

Perhaps we start with examples of ambitious projects:

• A certain Ivan Sentch has realized an old dream and independently build Aston Martin DB4, like James Bond. The body of his car, he printed in small pieces on the printer UP !, pieces 150 * 150 * 150mm.

Another example of printing the body of a classic Shelby Cobra car printed on a BAAM (Big Area Additive Manufacturing) printer.



Of course, these examples serve only for educational and research purposes, it’s too early to say before printing a solid car. But now 3D printing together with 3D scanning technology opens up new horizons for customizing, decorating, improving the ergonomics of using the car, as well as creating unique aerodynamic “skirts” for quite real racing cars.

And so, how to apply 3D technology in this context? Let's start from afar. Many car owners are sure to suffer with the search for a reliable stand for their smartphone, tablet or navigator. Chinese velcro on the glass from shaking fall under the feet, cover half of the review, but also terribly inconvenient in setting up and use in general. In this case, it is enough to find a ready-made model on the Internet, or design a phone holder for the customer, specifically for his phone.


Next in line are the coasters, as is known, not all cars are equipped with this option, or their location is extremely inconvenient.


And moving lower on the console with nostalgia, we recall that once we saw a cool transparent gear knob with a rose or spider from a friend of a taxi driver. We want something like that. The auto shop handles PPC dull and boring. But pens based on MadMax, I am sure, many would like to.


Such products can be made with an inexpensive 3D printer, and given the number of ready-made models, you may not be able to model at all.

Separately, you can affect the modification of car interiors, such as panels on BMW



Customization and modding your own car is not limited to this. There are many specialized companies that make body elements, lining the arches and sills, etc. To date, the custom "body kit" is made of fiberglass, removing the cast from a model of foam or sculpted clay.


This technology is quite laborious, dusty, multi-stage. In addition, to achieve perfect symmetry of body elements is extremely difficult, often putty for aligning the body element increases the weight of the part by a third.


3D printing, on the other hand, makes it possible to create symmetrical and relatively even elements that require minimal refinement. The problem may lie in the rather long production of large elements, and such production is difficult to put on stream, besides, the strength of plastics for 3D printing may not be enough for permanent use and the elements will still need to be strengthened with fiberglass or resin.

3D printing of a full-size bumper for auto VW Touareg



Do not forget about the two-wheeled technology. The problem of finding a whole protective plastic for a motorcycle is very important. In the vastness of our vast country goes a large number of motorcycles of old age, and even after minor accidents, with plastic damage, it is almost impossible to find it, or for an amount often exceeding the cost of the motorcycle itself. Therefore, printing such items on a 3D printer is a salvation for many owners.


This fairing has been scanned by a Sense scanner and printed on the UP Box .

The 3D-Today resource has published an excellent Mersedes repair case using 3D printing .


The model was made in the TinkerCad program and printed using a Wanhao Duplicator i3 3D printer. At first, PLA material was chosen for this work, but since the part will be used in places with high temperatures, it was decided to print it with the help of Nylon material. The detail fit perfectly and was used in the car.

Print for tuning Toyota Sequoia . Printed on the Witbox 3D printer. PLA material .





Printing caps and caps using ABS plastic




Chrysler logo print


Seal rings for DRL on the BMW X5





Casting and printing buttons


Prototyping




Thermal Vacuum Forming and 3D Printing


If you need to create a batch of thin-walled products of simple form, for example, fairing, you can use thermal vacuum molding. First, a master model, the so-called template, is made, it must be a durable, temperature-resistant material, usually wood or special plastics are used, the master model is milled or sliced ​​into CNC machines, in the second case it will need to be further glued and finished with a grinding machine. When the template is ready, it is placed on a special machine with a pump on the bottom, heating panels on the top and a special movable frame for fixing sheet material, after heating, the material is lowered onto the template, the pumps pump out air and after cooling the excess material is cut off - the product is ready. One of the advantages here is cheapness, CNC cutting and sheet material are quite cheap, and such a machine can be assembled even in the garage itself. Among the shortcomings, it is possible to manufacture products of only simple forms and only thin-walled ones; the more parts needed to be manufactured, the correspondingly there are more requirements for pumps and heating elements, and they can cost quite a lot already.


Printing master models for subsequent casting has quite a lot of advantages - you can easily make mirror master models, easy surface finishing compared to, for example, layered production on the CNC. For small products, this is ideal because printing them is quick and fairly cheap. But on the overall details, larger in size, for example, 20 cm, everything is not so rosy, quite a lot of material goes away, printing can last several days and there are requirements for the temperature conditions inside the printer so that the product does not stratify and curl when printed, printers with a large area seals are more expensive than small brethren, and printing in parts requires gluing and seam processing, respectively.


Vacuum forming body kit parts F-51 Red Wheels 3



3D scanning

Modern scanners and computer-aided design tools allow you to create fairly accurate computer models. Using them, it is possible to obtain a digital model of an existing unit, for example, a car body element (“body kit”), or to create a new one on its basis. Having a digital model, you can make any strength, mass or aerodynamic calculations in the shortest possible time and with minimal costs. And with a cheap, “home” FDM printer, you can quickly get full-size mockups, or ready-made units for the car.


3D scanning today is widely used both in the automotive industry and in the subsequent modding of automobiles. The main application in this direction, as it is easy to guess, is the creation of a digital copy of the element for subsequent copying, modification or removal of measurements. Let us consider these stages in more detail.


Copying - in modern cars a large number of symmetrical parts, and they periodically break or are lost, but it is not always possible to buy them for a reasonable price. Using a small stationary scanner, you can create an electronic copy, such as a small part, mirror it and, for example, print it out on a 3D printer, or make a casting method with greater strength and surface quality. Using hand scanners, the same can be done with large body elements, for example.


Change - if you want to make a functional modification to an existing element, for example, add a holder for your phone to an element of the dashboard using a scan, you can get a copy of the desired element and then simulate an additional element, and then make the product.

Measurements - the main direction of 3D scanning in modding cars. Not all elements of the car can be easily measured, radial surfaces, smooth bends, all this is difficult to measure and in the manufacture of body kit, your modeled product may simply not come together with the car itself and everything will have to be redone. Scanning allows you to avoid such problems, you get a fairly accurate copy of the surface of the car and can try on your body kit still in digital form and make the necessary changes immediately before production.


Those who are professionally engaged in the manufacture of modding elements usually use 3D scanning to measure the surface and create a model that fits the body perfectly, then a master model is made, using 3D printing or layer-by-layer gluing together a CNC machine, this form is removed from which the polyurethane plastic is cast, it is quite resistant to the external environment, durable and beautifully painted, with a form you can make a lot of castings that are ideally suited to the desired car model.



3D scanning can perfectly help in this kind of activity, most body elements have rounded shapes that are difficult to measure, which can be captured perfectly by the 3D scanner and the machine can be measured directly in the 3D modeling program, rather than crawling along it with a tape measure. In addition, it is quite fast, it takes 1-2 hours to scan a car with a hand scanner. Unfortunately, low-price scanners are usually not suitable for such purposes, since their accuracy is too low, but average price scanners such as Shining 3D EinScan-Pro or Artec Eva Lite are suitable for such purposes perfectly.



3D scans of sensor mounts on Land Rover



3D body scans on UAZ



Used equipment:

Small Size 3D Printers (FDM)

3D printers such as Picaso 3D Designer , Ultimaker 2+ , which have proven themselves well, are perfect for printing small products in excellent quality.

3D printer Picaso 3D Designer
Price: 117,500 rubles; Printing technology: FDM; Printing area: 200x200x210; Materials: ABS , PLA , HIPS , ASA , ABS / PC , NYLON , PET


Picaso 3D Designer - 3D printer from the Russian company PICASO, which uses technology that allows you to print with a record high accuracy of 50 microns!

Picaso 3D Designer is designed in such a way that all the mechanics are hidden behind an elegant and ergonomic body. Picaso 3D Designer easily fit into the interior of a study, workshop or training class. The printer has a rather compact dimensions of 365 × 386 × 452 mm, which is important for devices designed for personal use.

Ultimaker 2 Plus
Ultimaker 2 Plus - 235,000 rubles; Printing technology: FDM; Printing area: 223 x 223 x 205; Materials: PLA , ABS , CPE, CPE +, PC , Nylon , TPU 95A


Ultimaker 2 + is the latest development of the company Ultimaker, with high quality and speed of printing. The maximum allowable print resolution is now 20 microns! Ultimaker made a number of improvements to its 3D printer to increase performance.

Large Format 3D Printers (FDM)

In this category, you should pay attention to representatives such as Prism Pro v2 (updated printer version) and Makerbot Replicator Z18 . Both representatives show excellent print quality and are suitable for this task.

3D printer Prism Pro 2.0
Price - 260,000 rubles; Printing technology: FDM; Printing area: 400 x 800 mm; Materials: ABS , PLA , HIPS , FLEX , Watson


Prism Pro 2.0 is a professional-grade FDM printer made according to the “delta-robot” scheme. The device is equipped with a closed case and a heated work table, which allows you to print a wide range of consumables. The construction area reaches Ø400800mm with a minimum thickness of the applied layer of only 50 microns. It is possible to install an onboard monitoring module with an LCD screen and an interface for offline printing from drives.

MakerBot Replicator Z18 3D Printer
Price - 619 900 rubles; Printing technology: FDM; Printing area: 400 x 800 mm; Materials: PLA


The Makerbot Replicator Z18 is the first printer with an incredible print area, 305 x 303 x 457 mm. "Z18" in the title means that the height of the printed object can reach 18 inches. None of personal 3D printers have such a large print area and this is a big step forward in this field of production.

3D printer for printing photopolymer resin (SLA)

Formlabs Form 2 3D printer
Price - 419 900 rubles; Printing area: 145 x 145 x 175; Materials: Photopolymer


Formlabs Form 2 is the newest 3D printer from Formlabs, which received 40% more print space, touch screen controls, Wi-fi connection. Form 2 pushes the boundaries of what is possible in stereolithography.

3D scanners:
Of the models that will be interesting in the work, 3 models are worth noting: Shining 3D Einscan-Pro and Artec Eva , RangeVision Advanced . These scanners have high accuracy, resolution and are perfect for scanning cars and smaller parts.

Shins 3D Einscan-Pro 3D Scanner
Price - $ 4,999; Scanning area: 0.03-4m; Resolution: 1.3 MP: Accuracy: up to 0.05 mm


Einscan-Pro is a multifunctional 3D scanner that provides unsurpassed print quality with an accuracy of 0.5 mm. This scanner is universal because, due to the presence of 4 scanning modes, it can be used for regular static scanning, for scanning for design purposes, for a full scan of a human body and much more.

Artec Eva
Price - $ 13,700; Working distance: 0.4 - 1 m, Accuracy: up to 0.1 mm; Camera resolution 1.3 MP


Artec Eva 3D Scanner is an ideal choice for those who need to scan an object in seconds in color and with high accuracy. Artec Eva 3D Scanner does not need markers or additional calibration. Due to the high shooting speed and the ability to receive color data with high resolution, the scanner has almost unlimited possibilities.

RangeVision Advanced
Price: 710,000 rubles; Accuracy is 0.16 mm; Scanning area: 920 x 690 x 690 mm; Camera resolution: 2 MP


3D RangeVision Advanced scanner - unique in its capabilities 3D scanner. As a result, the development has been achieved excellent quality 3D models. This scanner is quite flexible and allows you to scan both small and large objects. The 3D scanner supports fragment stitching using markers, without using markers, as well as using a turntable.

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