3D Prints of Hood and Door Bumper Stops with TPU 95A

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KitCarlson

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I found on Sunday, rubber parts purchased a few years ago got hard and fell apart. My 66 Barracuda sits in garage, and is always ready to go. I took it for a test drive and heard slight unexpected rattles.

I purchased black TPU filament with 95A shore hardness to replace a air cleaner to cowl seal on my 25 year old tractor. It worked well without heat issues.

Using a digital caliper to measure example parts, started with door bumper first. I used FreeCAD to make 2D sketch in XY plane and extruded in Z, for 15mm length. I was lucky, it worked first time, so I made 3 more. TPU prints slow, at about 20 minutes per bumper.
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While printing door bumpers, I designed hood bumper, it was easier than door bumpers, it only took about 10 minutes. Sketch was done in XZ plane and rotated about Z axis. A hood bumper print, takes 45 minutes. Sketch is top down for print.
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Printer is a Fokoos (Focus) Odin-5 F3, less than $300 printer, assembles with 4 screws.

TPU seems to print without a smell. They say the hotter you print it the harder it is. I wanted bumper to be flexible, so printed at 215C, in the mid to low range. There is infill setting, on the door bumpers 100% infill was used because design structure has that. On hood bumper 50% infill was used, and that seemed to work fine.
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Pictures show design sketches, model, and finished parts. Black is hard to take pictures, please excuse that.
 
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Impressive. I couldn't 3D print my way out of a wet paper bag.
 
Great job! I have been having a hard time with TPU lately. I'm wondering if it got too much moisture. I can get it to stick to the bed, but the layers look all messed up like they are not adhering to one another.
 
I am fairly new to this. I am using blue painters tape on glass bed. I forgot in 1st print, it came lose after about 3/8" of height. I used part to check dimensions, added tape to bed, all other prints good.

Bed temperature 35C, Z step 0.2 mm, part cooling fan off, print speed about 20 to 30 mm/s. I find TPU sticks together great, never problem with that. Some extruder, and bowden tubes are troublesome with flexible filaments. If they under extrude, filaments too small, to touch each other. Cooling fan off important, otherwise too cool to stick. TPU does not seem to retain heat. I can pull parts off bed, right after printing and they do not feel warm.

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I bought a used machine on CL to start. No manual. I messed around about 3 weeks, adjusting things and watching youtube about printing. I was scared to try. Finally I tried, it was like asking out a girl for first time. :)

ClayDart, it also could be trying to print over hangs and making spaghetti. TPU supports are nearly impossible to cut and remove. Designs need to work without supports. The hoodbumper is an example where printed top down, with draft angle to build stairs to support edge rim. Without draft, edge would have spewed in air.
I think moisture creates bumps and bubbles.
I keep filament in plastic cake tote, along with desiccant. Dry desiccant in oven 150F.

Fuzz seen in tie rod boot ID, is from no filament retraction. I added 0.8mm traction and that eliminated fuzz.
 
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Sounds like you def. do know what your are doing. I will try again, now. Thanks
 
Most what I know came from youtube vids. 3D printing has great support there.
I can try to help if I can, but will need to view slicer files, and photos of print issues.

I hope to get to a place where I can contribute to printer design improvements. I have made a few improvements to my machines, but found others have done prior to me. I just ordered a spare controller board, in preparation for firmware enhancements.
 
Middle print shows what happens if print does not have correct orientation on build plate. Tried to print model bird whistle found on Thingiverse. When the mouth piece started looking like spaghetti, print was stopped. I figured out what went wrong, shrank part to 75%, tried again. Correct orientation shown or right. It worked, so reprinted in blue full size.

I learned that paying attention to slicer preview is important. It is possible to zoom in and see what print head is doing on each layer.

Slicers have tool for scaling, mirror, orientation, and multiple parts on build plate. I am just starting to learn about all that.
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I created model for shifter slider for 1966 auto console. It works well.
Thickness is 1.8 mm infill 20%, TPU.

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Hey, I remember seeing that piece when I pulled my shifter out! Thats a good application. Should post it up on tinkercad to share the file. Nice
 
I used FreeCAD. Dimensioned drawing in post only takes a couple minutes to draw. Then pad to 1.8mm and chamfer corners at 2mm. Export as STL, import in Cura for TPU cooling fan off. I did 3 layer walls, top, bottom, 20 % infill. The slider is very flexible.
 
This is great crossover hobby stuff here! I bought my 3D printer to make parts for my dart a few years ago, and after countless rolls of all kinds of filament, I am still having a blast creating files and printing parts. I think that I have about 425 different things that I designed on TinkerCad right now! I also do reloading ammo as a hobby and have made a number of improvements to my work area using the 3D printer in that hobby also! I also have a bunch of nieces and nephews children as well as grandchildren that I have made hundreds of gadgets and toys and learning tools for.
 
This is great crossover hobby stuff here! I bought my 3D printer to make parts for my dart a few years ago, and after countless rolls of all kinds of filament, I am still having a blast creating files and printing parts. I think that I have about 425 different things that I designed on TinkerCad right now! I also do reloading ammo as a hobby and have made a number of improvements to my work area using the 3D printer in that hobby also! I also have a bunch of nieces and nephews children as well as grandchildren that I have made hundreds of gadgets and toys and learning tools for.
Send us your tinkercad name so we can see your work! It's not as easy as it looks when you can create a 3D part out of nothing.
 
Nice to meet likeminded people.
I designed some stuff for my Valiant too.
My latest project is dog dish hubcaps with a custom design.
How about we upload our designs to Thingiverse, and make a fabo collection there? Like a central repository for A body related prints.
I think 3d printing parts for cars can be a powerful tool. Especially for parts, that are hard to get.
 
I added parts to Thingiverse, under "A-Body Mopar Rubber Parts". Not sure if all is well, it seems to be in a loop processing....
I was able to download them, but no view on site yet.
 
I added parts to Thingiverse, under "A-Body Mopar Rubber Parts". Not sure if all is well, it seems to be in a loop processing....
I was able to download them, but no view on site yet.

I see the hood bumper, door bumper and shifter cover.
 
I will try and post my parts on thingyverse later today, and I will go in to my TinkerCad and make everything public and post my tinkercad name here. This is good stuff!
 
My TinkerCad name is cmat668 and I changed a lot to public, but not all yet.
 
Awesome, will check both out. I linked my Formula S badges here too from tinkercad.
 
Just completed the 3d print of the rear roof bow for my 66 dart convertible. There wasn’t much left from the original to go from. I have the STL file on thingverse . This is only a template not for actual use. Still fine tuning …need to shorten the overall length by 3/4” …looks like I have everything else really close. Let me know your thoughts.

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