Carpokes Porsche Forum

Has anyone given any thought to 3d printing the column surround/ cover to an early 944 ? Is this something that can even be done?

This is above my pay grade as I don’t have a 3D printer, don’t have a clue how they work, and I’m not very computer inclined. All I know is they don’t make that part any longer and with these cars pushing 40+ years old, the plastic is getting very brittle. This price has to be removed when doing any work behind the gauges or in the column controls. And I’ll admit, it’s not the easiest to remove or put back. You think and feel like it’s going to snap in half every time.

My surround currently has broken screw posts so I don’t even put it back. I would love to have a cover though without replacing mine with a very aged $50 piece to only do the same thing.

I guess since we are discussing this area of the car and plastic parts, the steering wheel cover at the back of the 3 spoke wheel is in the same shape with the screw mounting posts broken from the body. Is that a 3D printable item ?

What are your thoughts?

Certainly possible. For something like that, you might be better off printing a mold and casting a part in a durable material. It would need to start with a CAD file... If you had the original parts, a good CAD guy could replicate them to start.

Tom wrote: Sun Nov 27, 2022 6:38 pm Certainly possible. For something like that, you might be better off printing a mold and casting a part in a durable material. It would need to start with a CAD file... If you had the original parts, a good CAD guy could replicate them to start.

I have the original parts. Thats not an issue.

What kind of material would you think should be used?

They are factory made with plastic. Is that not something a 3D printer can do well?

StaceyQ944 wrote: Mon Nov 28, 2022 11:42 am

Tom wrote: Sun Nov 27, 2022 6:38 pm Certainly possible. For something like that, you might be better off printing a mold and casting a part in a durable material. It would need to start with a CAD file... If you had the original parts, a good CAD guy could replicate them to start.

I have the original parts. Thats not an issue.

What kind of material would you think should be used?

They are factory made with plastic. Is that not something a 3D printer can do well?

Yes, 3D printers print mostly plastic, but not all plastics are the same. The most common 3D printer plastic (PLA) will melt in a hot car. You'd need something like ABS at least. There are also many different types of printers. Most of the 'home' printers create parts that look 3D printed (with the layer lines visible). As you move into higher-end printer technologies, you can start getting parts that look factory-made and hold up to rugged use. If interested, here's a quick overview of the types of printers....

https://all3dp.com/1/types-of-3d-printe ... echnology/

The challenge in doing those steering wheel parts is not the printing really, but rather getting the CAD model (.stl) for the parts. A good CAD designer could replicate those parts, but paying someone to do that wouldn't be cheap and I fear they would take me forever (if ever), as it's more complicated than the things I'm used to modeling.

For a part like this, you'd probably want to print it on a cheap printer in cheap plastic first (which I'd be happy to do for you), to make sure the model is right and to fine-tune it, etc., and then probably send it to a commercial 3D printing shop so it can be printed on a high-end ($100k+) SLS printer in nylon. For 1 set of parts, it's probably not worth all the effort/cost, so probably only a viable project if you wanted to run a batch. Or, just do it on in ABS on an FDM printer and accept the 3D-printed look.

My 2 cents or maybe it's only one cent in this economy! These parts were originally plastic injection molded out of something like delrin plastic or Zytel nylon and have a UV additive to fight the sun light ageing & break down, since they are not subject to reaction with solvents like ABS would be.The 3-D printing is a good option since it would be small numbers of parts.I would have the part 3-D scanned on a CMM machine (Coordinate Measuring Machine) which will give a usable 3-D file that can be used with a pro level 3-D printer.There are a couple things about this part that make it a challenge.The thin wall cross sections of the part the raised posts the accept the screws.I would guess these original parts used self tapping screws to close the 2 halves of the clam shell around steering column.

I work with 3-D printed parts on a daily bases in the medical device industry.It's very good technology for alot of model type applications.If you look at every part on modern cars there is an enormous amount of injection molded parts in the assembly of a car.The injection molds of these parts are for the most part very expensive depending on the size of the part.If I had to guess I would say almost every car manufacture on the planet has parts molded in China.

If there is a need for the 944 steering column clam shells or steering wheel parts I would look into seeing who else needs this part(s) and figure out how many you need so the cost can be shared.

My 1/2 cent worth of information!
Stigs cousin

to repair my broken screw posts, i used milliput. MUCH stronger now!

https://www.milliput.com/yellow_grey.html

The other quasi-additive manufacturing I have done (repairs, not really making new parts) is using Q Bond. It's basically powdered plastic and super glue, so it's not really good in wet environments (I assume, from the super glue part) but it's fast and makes some strong bonds between all the plastics I've used it on in my cars.

Cheers