FJBen
SILVER Star
I think with all things in life…. Oozing = bad.
Thanks for the work on this totally random part that is NLA and never was in most of our cruisers, yet we want it.
obsolete part reproduction interest (1 Viewer)
- Thread starter RHINO
- Start date
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I think with all things in life…. Oozing = bad.
Thanks for the work on this totally random part that is NLA and never was in most of our cruisers, yet we want it.
Just found this. I'm in for a set. Also in for pre-paying to reserve a set.
Time for another update:
The last two weeks got a bit crazy. The tax return season hit us hard. Folks started getting their refunds and sales took off. We had to pull our machine that was printing prototypes for the steering column insert and put it back on the assembly line until we got caught up. We are back to normal and the machine is back into prototyping. Our latest hurdle right now is finding the correct solvent and application to smooth out the 3D printed lines in the rubber. Sanding it is not an option. Heat deforms the part (so we learned) so chemical smoothing is our only option. We have tried 3 solvents and only one had promising results. We tried dipping the part, spraying the part, brushing on the solvent, and event creating a heat mist bath. The best results were from actually brushing it on. It allowed for the most solvent to be applied at once. The down side is that our solvent proof gloves are melting. (not so solvent proof). We had to switch to leather gloves. Here is a pic of the insert with a single brush on pass. It is going to take 4-5 passes to get it totally smooth. This is NOT a product ready part. Do NOT think the final product will look like this. Just showing the process. We have to get this part smoothed out a lot more and then test fitted. Each pass has to fully cure (about an hour) before we can take another pass at it. I should have a final part with 4-5 passes in the next couple days. Hopefully it will be really smooth and ready for test fitting. Here is a side by side of before and after one brush on pass of solvent. We will keep doing a brush on solvent pass until we get the results we want.
The last two weeks got a bit crazy. The tax return season hit us hard. Folks started getting their refunds and sales took off. We had to pull our machine that was printing prototypes for the steering column insert and put it back on the assembly line until we got caught up. We are back to normal and the machine is back into prototyping. Our latest hurdle right now is finding the correct solvent and application to smooth out the 3D printed lines in the rubber. Sanding it is not an option. Heat deforms the part (so we learned) so chemical smoothing is our only option. We have tried 3 solvents and only one had promising results. We tried dipping the part, spraying the part, brushing on the solvent, and event creating a heat mist bath. The best results were from actually brushing it on. It allowed for the most solvent to be applied at once. The down side is that our solvent proof gloves are melting. (not so solvent proof). We had to switch to leather gloves. Here is a pic of the insert with a single brush on pass. It is going to take 4-5 passes to get it totally smooth. This is NOT a product ready part. Do NOT think the final product will look like this. Just showing the process. We have to get this part smoothed out a lot more and then test fitted. Each pass has to fully cure (about an hour) before we can take another pass at it. I should have a final part with 4-5 passes in the next couple days. Hopefully it will be really smooth and ready for test fitting. Here is a side by side of before and after one brush on pass of solvent. We will keep doing a brush on solvent pass until we get the results we want.
Last edited:
bottombracket
SILVER Star
Brad, I admire your dedication to getting this done, but I don’t think this is ever going to be profitable or anywhere close. I don’t want you to bankrupt your business for this project.
- Thread starter
- #107
just a crazy, frustrating but also fascinating process.
we will all owe you BIGTIME when you pull this off.
we will all owe you BIGTIME when you pull this off.
It wont bankrupt me. I have developed MANY products over the years. I fully understand the process. This one is bigger than just this single product. I have a line of items I would like to start making out of rubber. This is my learning curve for numerous products. What I learn hear on these small parts will get applied to other projects on much larger parts. I would rather mess us these small steering column inserts instead of messing up parts that take 60-70 hours to print. It's the perfect little part to learn about printing and chemically smoothing rubber.
I have done silicone molds in the past by using 3D printed parts as the master. The problem is that the molds break down around 10-15 parts and a new mold has to be made again. The time and cost to continually make new molds quickly gets higher than just 3D printing the part out of a similar rubber. If you only need a dozen parts total then the mold making option is pretty good but when you need repeated batches every couple weeks then the process becomes a HUGE pita.
So my part finisher just brought me a couple of the inserts. These went through 4 brush-on solvent treatments each. You can see the one part that is fresh off a machine for comparison. The parts had a real ugly high gloss finish which was annoying me so I had our painter toss some plasti-dip on them. We are also going to look into bead-blasting them to get a more matte finish instead of the plasti-dip coating. I am not sure how well the plasti-dip will hold up. We will put it through some tests tomorrow to see how durable that is. Based on this pic, I think a 5th solvent coating will be needed. I am sure we will continue to get better at this process as we smooth more and more of them.
- Thread starter
- #112
i'm pretty happy with that Mr, Brad, if it gets even better i'll have to look into repainting my Troopy 
- Thread starter
- #113
not stupid, i looked into it, the mold would run roughly 12k and i could do small batch orders from that. but for the small numbers i see selling, i wanted to see about 3D printing.
i am gratefull that BH3D wanted to give it a go.
Spot on. I have more appreciation for people who do stuff like this after the whole knob reproduction side project I did recently.
FRP top models with removable top door frames have these also
TreadingLight
La Liebre de la Muerte
My Australian Troopy doesn't have these either .... But I want a set.
Figured it was time for an update. We went into production on these and got around 10 pairs made and then the Mother's Day rush slammed us. We had to pull that machine away from the rubber part production and back into our main assembly line. Even had to dust off some older retired machines to keep up with demand. For the last week we have been trying to get inventory back up to normal after the huge rush. We are 3-4 days out from being fully restocked in all items. At that point I will resume production on these steering column inserts. My goal is to get 20 pairs ready to ship before we launch them on our seller platforms. I'm also hopeful we can get these launched before the Father's Day rush begins.
- Thread starter
- #119
not yet ready for prime time, but hopefully soon.
It's time to come out of hiding. The Mother's day rush slammed us. Right about the time we got caught up on orders and inventory we got slammed again with Father's day. We are just now getting caught up on inventory again. The machine that prints in rubber is back off the main assembly line and back to printing the column inserts. The 20th pair is actually printing right now. As soon as it's done it will go to my chemical guy who will start the smoothing process on all of them. This is a new product so I'm not sure of the timeline on smoothing 20 pairs. My guess is that I will have the batch back to me by the end of the week. I am tentatively planning to have these available to buy at the start of next week. I will update again this weekend.
