Project 718 Cayman T: Part 11 – DSC Sport V3 Controller

The Porsche SPASM suspension comes with electronically adjustable dampers. From the factory, you get Normal and Sport modes with Sport mode being much stiffer, of course. But why settle for the two presets from Porsche when you have infinitely adjustable dampers? The DSC Sport V3 Controller enables full control of the stock suspension allowing the user to tune the suspension to best suit the roads or tracks the car is being used on.

After reading around the internet a bit, I had learned the housing for the PCBA was completely plastic. I also had seen some rare instances of the unit running very hot and melting the plastic backplate. So, because I can’t leave things alone, I used Autodesk Fusion to design my own backplate to be made from aluminum. It’s amazing the tools available for free these days.

I 3D printed the design out of plastic for a test fit before committing to metal.

The PCBA is offset roughly 3.5mm from the edge of its housing. I made the pad on my backplate 2.5mm to close the gap to ~1.0mm.

Why do you make a 3D print before making the real thing? In order to catch little mistakes like this large gap between my backplate wall and the connector.

Another lesson is to check the accuracy of the 3D print. There’s a tolerance on that too. In this case, for whatever reason, one side was a little stretched which is why the two left screw holes didn’t line up.