The 3D scan creates what is known as a ‘point cloud’, consisting of millions of little dots in space.
The next step is to turn the raw point cloud into a ‘mesh body’, consisting of millions of little triangles.
I used the mesh body as a template to draw the door frame from scratch. Simple sketches of the shape and size and location of the mounting holes are the foundation of making the part.
Each shape is extruded to the desired thickness of the part.
After a bunch of sketches for each supporting rib and brace, the completed design was ready. The only major difference is that I made it in 2-pieces in order to fit on my Creality CR-10 Printer’s 300×300 build plate. I radiused the edges and copied the OEM locking interface to connect the two pieces together.
The key to creating the missing piece is a simple “mirror” function. A few clicks of the mouse turns hours of work drawing the scanned part into the missing one.
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
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.
Any chance you could share those stls?
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.
Nice work! Getting dangerous there with the CAD 🙂
How do these hold vs mita motorsports’ version?