I made floor heater-duct diverters and a plenum for the center vent using a rapid prototyping machine. It’s essentially a 3D printer. You send the 3D CAD file to the printer and 4 to 12 hours later a plastic part emerges. Pretty cool technology.

The parts are made of white polycarbonate which I painted black.

Attached are pics of the center plenum before paint, and then mounted to the control panel. It’s held on using vinyl covered spring clip taken from my old door seals.

The floor duct diverters will be glued to the bottom of the heater box vents. (see attached pic). These will direct the air into the footwells.

I plan to install the controls this weekend. Then comes the under-hood stuff later in the month.

I believe I saw Jay Leno talking about that machine and process on one of the Car Crazy episodes. IIRC he was having a part made for his Stanley Steamer.

Nice job! You are lucky to have access to such inovative equipment. That is very impressive technology. Wonder how long it will be before we will be able to purchase the 3D file online and print out parts on our home rapid prototyping machines. My guess is, not long.

That is really a cool machine & process. If only you could make a gorgeous supermodel for me?

Otherwise, maybe a few people could sit down with a hug bunch of Z parts and digitize it all for posterity, max molds, etc.

Not to sound like a wet blanket but how durable are the parts. I didn't think the polycarbonate was very durable. On the other had, those parts are being stressed much at all. Maybe they will hold up well.

carl

Julio, would love to buy one of the center vents from you, if you are interested in selling one! I have the Hot Rod Air system and have modified the existing center vent to work with a later model Z vent diffuser, not the greatest solution. Let me know!

The abs rapid prototype material is pretty brittle, but the polycard material is very strong, so no issue there.

You can now buy a small STL machine for about $10K, so the price is already coming down. I expect to see this process get faster and cheaper in the next 10 years, replacing injection molding for small part runs.

Since the machine and material are at my workplace, and I don't control them. I'll see if I can get a couple more center vents made, but can't promise anything.

At that price, why don't we all get one?

Julio, I appreciate you considering it, please let me know if able to create another center vent and what you would be willing to sell it for. Thanks!

Julio, I appreciate you considering it, please let me know if able to create another center vent and what you would be willing to sell it for. Thanks!

Since it's not my machine or material, assuming they will let me use the machine to make another one, it wouldn't be ethical to sell it. I'll only want you to pay for shipping. I'll find out if I can get another one made next week.

Julio,

I can sympathize with you about the use of the machine. My brother is an engineer at a large company and has access to all of these machines but can do little for me. I know I am being greedy but man, he could do a lot with some of the stuff. Anyway.... I was thinking of the ABS plastic as being the brittle stuff. Good luck with the polycard material. The pictures look perfect.

carl

That is really a cool machine & process. If only you could make a gorgeous supermodel for me?

Otherwise, maybe a few people could sit down with a hug bunch of Z parts and digitize it all for posterity, max molds, etc.

Tomo,

Sorry, but my CAD skills aren't good enough to make a decent reproduction of a supermodel. Besides, her head would be empty, though that may not matter... *grin*

However, your idea of making cad models of NLA parts for later reproduction is a very good one. Some 3D part models could be easily recreated in Pro/e or Solidworks, but many are complex shapes that would be difficult to model.

I don't have acess to a 3D measurement machine used to digitize complex part shapes. Anybody else have access to one of these machines?