Thought I would share some pictures of another project I'm working on. I've been working on redoing the intercooler piping on the Project car and decided I had enough room to send the hotside right through the core support. The core support was large enough to the diameter piping but it was at a bit of a weird angle. So I mocked up a charge pipe in CAD and sent it to the printer. The Pipe is made out of ABS plastic and I added a recessed lip to keep the charge pipes on.

I wanted to make sure the charge pipe didn't leak so I printed caps and pressurized the tube and let it sit at 30psi.

Once I was satisfied with the results I through it on the dyno and spun it up. We laid down 300 at the wheels with no problems. What's interesting is that between each run I would grab the charge pipes and consistently the hotside was colder. Now I would imagine this has alot to do with being on the Dyno but it was funny to watch the tuners reaction.

Hope you guys like

 

Dyno video :-)

 

Cool but very unlikely that will hold up long term. ABS has glass transition of 105 degrees C and most 3D printers extrude it at ~190 degrees C.

 

Cool!

 

Yeah I imagine I might have some problems down the road. But I'm not to worried about it, it's more of a test on theory at this point. If I start having issues I can always step up the material to a taulman 910 or something of that nature. Worst case scenario if I start to fail nylon I can send it out to Shape ways or some print manufacture and have them replicated into a carbon or something super strong.

 

I find it hard to imagine that pipe would get to boiling temperature ,especially being totally exposed to the fresh air next to the IC

 

To be honest it's hot the heat I'm worried about. If I'm seeing 200 F in my charge or underhood we've got bigger problems. It's more just the integrity of printed ABS. printed parts are tough but automotive applications are torture testing.

 

Could look into getting it 3D printed in metal. Shouldn't cost too much and the geometry is pretty simple (relative to printing).

 

You should 3d print a new backdoor end-tank for your IC instead. The turbo looks to be oriented perfectly for it

Cool project though

 

I probably could send it out and get it printed to metal, but I really like the idea of a composite. Not only is it lighter but it's much less prone to heat soak. But if carbon and other composites can't take the abuse then :I might look into that.


An endtank would be tough. I would have to fashion some kind of mounting system. But that would be cool.

 

Just use it as a negative to print a mould for a carbon one with now you've proofed it out.