Earlier in the year I had planned to start 3d printing air intakes from my updated duct design. CFD on this design says it flows much better than the older version- This is in part because it was designed around thin walls and making use of all of the available space gained when downsizing from 3mm walls to ~1mm walls. ABS on the old parts has been marginal, heat soak, hot climates, and track use could push ABS past it’s TG and cause it to melt. To solve that problem and build more robust parts, I started building a 3d printer for engineering plastics with the intention of printing the ducts out of straight polycarbonate (150c tg, impact resistant). Polycarbonate is difficult to print, especially with large thin wall structures like this duct. I have a half built printer and all the parts I need laying around, but for the foreseeable future I am working crunch hours Wrench and have no time to devote to other projects.
Some details on that printer and what I was planning to do with it:
The printer started as a tronxy X5s and the following parts are either installed or waiting until I have time to install them:
*750w AC silicone heater mounted to a mic6 aluminum build plate
*Duet Wifi control board
*Bondtech BMG extruder
*E3d Volcano hot end with titanium heat break water cooling
*Twin wall polycabonate chamber enclosure, intended to reach 80-90c chamber temps
*Replace XY linear motion with hiwin rail packed with high temp grease
*Mounted on a custom steel cart
*Ducted exhaust run through an air scrubber to the outside. Inline fan creating small amount of negative chamber pressure to keep fumes under control
*1000w heating element for chamber air
All of this info about my half built printer should be a good indication of how this part needs to be printed. Attempting to print it in PLA will result in failure. ABS is will be marginal and fail in some applications. Heat soaked engine bays can get very hot. Printing high temp plastics is a battle against warp and layer adhesion, high chamber temps help with both which is why I was designing a printer around ~90c chamber temps.
Get the files to print here:
https://www.thingiverse.com/thing:3001440
