3D printing functional car parts with ApolloX

this week i've been printing automotive parts that reside inside an engine bay and to do it i found a filament that handles the heat like abs but prints as easily as pla [Music] my favorite 3d printing projects are the ones that are useless to everyone except me let me explain the real beauty for me of 3d printing is when i need to solve a problem that no off-the-shelf part exists for so i can design and make something that wouldn't be possible in any other way 3d printing often goes well with my other hobbies in this case modifying cars this video is going to take you through my design process for creating a bespoke part to go inside my car's engine bay and it's also going to showcase this apollo x filament which i truly am impressed with this is my nissan 180sx but it has a sylvia front end which makes it a nissan sillady a cult drift classic as seen in initial d my car was born in japan but now resides in australia as a long-term project i like to do all of my own work on it that includes maintenance fitting aftermarket parts like turbos and sometimes even fabricating exhaust parts one of the best projects i ever did on the car involved arduino and had pressure and temperature sensors mounted all through the engine bay they went to a control box with an arduino mega and wireless module which sends data through to the cabin where it's displayed on a custom tft screen perfect for track days and there was nothing like this available at the time i've actually got a full log of this build that i'll link in the description it contains all of the parts you need troubleshooting as well as source code for the arduino but this video is not about that rather it's about this my pod filter this one came on the car and is a common aftermarket modification now i consider myself a responsible ambassador for modifying cars in my opinion you should enjoy said cars on organized truck days whether it be drift drag circuit or anything else and leave silly driving off the street and that's what i do but my car is still street registered which makes getting to and from these events a lot more convenient but it presents other problems it's different all around the world but in australia modifying a car can really give you some unwanted attention from the police there's several common modifications that are likely to attract a defect notice and i've taken the time to eliminate these from my car except for one and that's the pod filter which still remains i've heard the theory is that since they're oiled and exposed in the engine bay they present a potential fire hazard i've never actually heard of this happening but i suppose it's possible and the rule is the rule so i'd prefer to get rid of mine if i can particularly since my one is so old and nasty so what i need is a factory style air box with panel filter but as you can see there's not much room due to my custom intercooler piping previously i'd gone to a wrecker and purchased a factory nissan air box that matched my airflow meter but there's no way that this is going to fit in the available space in any orientation hence my desire to design and 3d print a custom airbox my first step was to try and create more space by moving back the airflow meter and that meant shortening the intake pipe to the turbo so i found some spare pipe with an appropriate curve trimmed it down cleaned up the edge and fitted this instead i also rotated the hose clamps and moved the fuse box to create what looked like a usable amount of space to fit a 3d printed air box to fit the shape was going to have to be unusual so i started with this piece of foam thinking i could trim it down until it would fit in the space and it didn't take too long until i decided that it could with the panel filter going diagonally and cutouts for things like the fuse box there was even room to have a nice cold air intake going near the factory position i took some reference photos with a ruler in place to help my measurements so i could position the key features accurately in cad but before i could start designing i had another problem an engine bay particularly one with a turbo is quite a hot place i needed a filament that could handle the heat and not warp and distort yet still be easy to print my filament sponsor x3d has an excellent part on their website where you can look at filaments by properties and here i noticed there was a none warping section and what took my fancy here was apollo x high temp filament keep in mind this is an australian dollar price which equates to around 45 us dollars for a roll apollo x is a performance engineering filament based on asa and ideal for me it was claimed to have great thermal stability and zero warp printing it even mentioned on the page that it was a perfect choice for automotive applications it seemed based on the website that this filament would offer pla style printing with an abs-like final result one thing i really like about form futura filaments is the cardboard box as well as the cardboard spool inside this box we'll find a table with print settings for all of their filaments but it's also included on the actual spool this one needs a hot end temp of 235 to 255 a heated bed between 80 to 100 off to low pipe cooling and it recommends an enclosure but more on that later as an initial print test i decided to do this print in place wrench and since my target printer was a cr-10 max i also scaled it up i used 0.4 millimeter layer height with a hot end temp of 250 and a bed temp of 100 and as you can see there is no enclosure over the printer as you can see the final result is huge and very clean most importantly there's no lifting at all off the bed and there doesn't seem to be any warping the wrench also seems to be plenty strong despite having low infill you'll notice that i didn't manage to remove all of the support and get the wrench moving some of the portions on this model actually go a long way inside so i didn't think i was likely to separate it cleanly and i moved on the apollo x filament seemed legit so i could move back to the actual air box when i got the factory air box from the wrecker it came with this rather gross panel filter since fitment of this part is critical the first thing i did was model it in cad at least to the basic dimensions i then modeled up the two mating surfaces of the air box designed to grip on the rubber gasket of the panel filter each copied the factory air box in having mating surfaces to ensure a good seal i designed this simple but hopefully robust feature for clamping the two halves together and this very simple clip designed to act as a live hinge gripping tight enough to hold the two halves together yet still removable without any tools the first thing i did was print these two critical parts in regular pla just to make sure that everything was going to match fortunately the clearances and dimensions were spot on and the clips seemed to do their job as well the gap between the two halves closely matched the factory air box and with a little persuasion the clips could be removed without any tools hurdle cleared time to design the actual air box i had my foam template and i used a ruler to take some basic measurements of its extremities combined with my reference photos i was able to come up with this my final airbox design was modeled very closely to the foam template it had a cutout to clear the fuse box and an opening in the upper right hand corner to act as an inlet to aid with clamping i added two more clasping spots and on the engine side i would really have preferred to have more volume but that's the best i could do with limited space the pattern was measured and modeled to match the airflow meter that it needed to bolt to both halves of the engine box were designed to be printed without any support material although the steep overhang for the outlet as well as some of the clasps were going to prove a challenge the pre-filter side of the air box was more forgiving in terms of overhangs but also a much larger print between the two halves there was just under 24 hours of printing time i started to think how long this would have taken with a standard 0.4 millimeter nozzle as opposed to the 0.6 nozzle i was using here to go with the 0.4 millimeter layer height the finished parts were definitely up to the job the layers were stacked quite consistently for the smaller piece there was zero lifting off from the bed and the only troubles were areas with the really steep overhangs as you might expect the larger half was much the same it peeled off very slightly in one corner but that didn't affect the accuracy the overhangs are okay considering how steep they were and again the layers are stacked quite nicely this one was printed on a particularly cold night and i think that shows here with two cracks where the layers have separated although the splits don't go the whole way through and this will be fairly easy to patch up at a later time i needed a flat surface so the airflow meter could bolt on accurately and i found this plastic actually quite good to put on the linisher unlike pla it didn't overheat and throw off chunks instead the surface of the plastic seemed to melt together and join and give me a fairly smooth surface finish despite going too deep in some places now that i had some finished parts i was able to test the strength and both of these halves of the air box could easily support my body weight so that was another big tick after cleaning up the mounting holes with a drill and with the aid of a tpu 3d printed gasket i was able to mount the airflow meter and matching bell mouth to the output side of the air box so now for the moment of truth would my assembled 3d printed air box actually fit in the awkward space available i took a deep breath and angled the parts down into the cavity and much to my relief i found that they sat quite nicely if anything i'd been too conservative and left a little too much room around the fuse box despite the clips poking up the bonnet was able to be closed without issue as well so i took some more reference photos so i could design the inlet snorkel aiming to use the factory cutouts that led to the original air box the snorkel or cold air feed was a simple loft expanding to take advantage of the available space and since the clips were sticking up and likely to get caught on things i also designed this updated version designed to clip on in the same way but have a single finger release when you slit it underneath these should sit a lot closer to the air box and make the whole thing more compact printing and fitting the snorkel was very straightforward as expected i simply cut threads into one side of the air box but when i printed a single clip with apollo x instead of pla it got too hot and deformed badly rather than add part cooling i instead chose to print eight at a time to fix the issue and they turned out much much better with a very acceptable surface finish the new more streamlined design worked exactly as i had hoped it clipped on with a satisfying click but with a little bit of pressure from underneath would unclip and make opening the air box quite simple here goes the final fitment and it's still possible to angle it in from the top even with the cold air inlet in place and i'm pleased to report that everything fits as intended in fact i probably could have been a bit greedier with the size of the snorkel the air box just clears the blue silicon tubing and there's just enough room to reach under and plug in the airflow meter there's plenty of cool air coming in from the front of the car to the opening of the snorkel the new air box looks like it was meant to be there it's strong temperature resistant and most importantly of all street legal even if you're not into cars hopefully you can see the merits of this apollo x filament because it definitely works as advertised as for the air box this is a project that i've wanted to do for a long long time so i'm really pleased to cross it off the list have you got any thoughts on a good use for this filament or maybe you'd like to share with me your project car please leave either of those down below in the description thank you so much for watching and until next time happy 3d printing g'day it's michael again if you like the video then please click like if you want to see more content like this in future click subscribe and make sure you click on the bell to receive every notification if you really want to support the channel and see exclusive content become a patron visit my patreon page see you next time you

Channel: Teaching Tech

Views: 252,535

Rating: 4.9580045 out of 5

Keywords: 3d printing, 3d printed, 3d printer, car parts, automotive, 3d print, form futura, apollox, creality, cr-10 max, cr10 max, prusa, mk3, sileighty, initial d, drift, car, track, drag, 180sx, modification, no warp, engineering, filament, test, tested, print in place, wrench, pod filter, airbox

Id: lCqwA1h3JV4

Length: 13min 22sec (802 seconds)

Published: Fri Aug 21 2020