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

The interface where the center door frame locks into the front door frame is matched identically.

The 3d Printed piece fits perfectly.

After verifying that the design fits, extensive testing was done on multiple different materials.  PLA is the most common thermoplastic used in 3D printing, but it warps from UV rays and softens in temps that can be found inside a car on a summer day.  Carbon-fiber reinforced PLA and a few other materials held up to the heat and UV rays.

Countless destructive tests were performed on entire spools (the plastic printing filament is wound on 0.8-1KG spools) of different materials, brands, and print settings.  Their performance was benchmarked against the strength of the OEM ABS plastic.  Yes, OEM pieces were destroyed to ensure the new printed parts were actually stronger.

When 3D printing parts, there are tons of different settings from build plate temperature, extruder temperature, print speed, feed rate, cooling, layer height, retraction distance and rate, etc… that all effect the finish product’s texture, dimensional accuracy, strength, and stiffness.  This photo is less than 1/10th of the spools and spools worth of destroyed parts that filled up a rather large trash can in order to have the confidence that the 3D printed part is stronger than OEM.

Different materials have different shades of ‘black’ and different textures.  Carbon Fiber-reinforced materials tend to be more of a metallic grey than a true ‘black’.

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