Project NSX: Part 9 – Designing, Fitting and Testing a 3D Printed Door Card Frame

Acura NSX Broken front door frame tab

We were looking forward to restoring Project NSX piece by piece, replacing all of the broken door frames.

Acura NSX new front door frame tabs

With the new front door frame installed, a sense of pride started to develop as each piece was installed.

Acura NSX new vs old rear door frame

The rear door frames desperately needed replacing.

Acura NSX new rear door frame installed

Now that the new rear frames were installed, we could turn our attention to designing the center section.

SCANNING, DESIGNING, and PRINTING NSX CENTER DOOR FRAME

Since the driver’s side center door frame was not available in the US or in stock in Japan at the time, my best option was to design and 3D print it.  This required laser scanning the brand-new passenger side center door frame, processing the scan, drawing the new part, mirroring it to create the missing driver’s side, and then 3D printing it it.

Mountune FaroArm Prizm Laser Scanning

Our friends at Mountune used their FaroArm’s Prizm Laser to scan the part.  I didn’t get a picture of them scanning the door frame, but they used the same equipment when they scanned the NSX’s C30 block for the development of a new dry sump oiling system that we are working on and will cover in a future article.

Table of Contents:

Page 1 – Problem: Broken Door Frame Tabs
Page 2 – Broken Tabs Con’t & New OEM Front & Rear
Page 3 – Replacing Front & Rear Frames, Laser Scanning
Page 4 – Drawing & Designing Door Frames
Page 5 – 3D Printing Door Frames
Page 6 – Test Fitting & Destructive Testing
Page 7 – Redesigning NSX Door Frame & Finished Product

5 comments

  1. Have you looked into black PEI like ULTEM9085? It’s pretty amazing for a FDM material. We have a lot of parts made with it, but we aren’t printing it ourselves so I don’t know if it’s something limited to the very expensive commercial/industrial printers.

  2. You guys should try a Nylon CF like Esun EPA CF. the layer lines basically dissappear and you wont need to worry about car temps. I can promise those will deform on a hot day when you pull on the door card.

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