1HD-FT EGR delete with a 3D printed crossover adapter!

[John Young]

So I have the first article of the adapter in a useable material.

The logo did not come out too well.

I sanded and smoothed a bit.

 

[John Young]

And I decided to go head and try to use this one with no further refinement (after hand smoothing with some difficulty given the carbon fiber content).

I also decided to get rid of the logos with the left over JB Weld

So tomorrow I will install and I should be able to finally test this.

 

[logicbyondreaso]

I assume you have the model file. Have you considered pricing out having this part either CNC machined or 3rd printed in a metal of your choice?

 

[John Young]

I will be getting the file. I'm hopeful this plastic part will do the job and I will be done. But time will tell.

 

[syche]

Hi All, i have experimented 3d printed parts on HDFT intake, currently testing my gen4 intercooler with a lot of printed parts.
You need to redesign adapter, you need a flange to sandwich tight the plastic to the flanges on both sides, bolting straight on it, it will creep / deform even with a fairly large washer. but most importantly, the specs given by filament manufacturer are after a long high temp curing, not straight out of the printer. This is critical and will make the difference between you part failing at 85 degrees c or 190 degrees.
The rivnut insert is a dangerous approach, especially with you plan on pushing boost over OEM specs.
Enjoy testing

My turbo is pushing 1.5 bar and so far, cured plastic is holding really well.

 

[John Young]

Hi All, i have experimented 3d printed parts on HDFT intake, currently testing my gen4 intercooler with a lot of printed parts.
You need to redesign adapter, you need a flange to sandwich tight the plastic to the flanges on both sides, bolting straight on it, it will creep / deform even with a fairly large washer. but most importantly, the specs given by filament manufacturer are after a long high temp curing, not straight out of the printer. This is critical and will make the difference between you part failing at 85 degrees c or 190 degrees.
The rivnut insert is a dangerous approach, especially with you plan on pushing boost over OEM specs.
Enjoy testing

My turbo is pushing 1.5 bar and so far, cured plastic is holding really well.

Hi Syche, I was not planning to go over stock, at least not initially. 0.7 or 0.8 bar. Might push it to 1.0 to 1.2 but that would be about it.

Re the printing, I do understand the point re annealing. The final part will be printed in PA-6 in a printer that maintains internal temp at 90C which I think may lessen some of the need, but this is, at bottom, an experiment. Today we had a bit of a setback when the next test design came back with dimensions that were significantly off. The spacing between the two bottom studs on the 1HD-T intake manifold is 112mm by my measurement and the test article ended up at 109, which made it pretty much unmountable. And they are still trying to figure out why all the dimensions shrunk on this particular print. Sigh.

 

[John Young]

This just in, the engineer helping me with this print just messages to say in pertinent part: "Just started the print, added the missing hole, increased the size of the holes for the top inserts, adjusted the dimensions of the bottom holes to 112mm"

I will ask him to look at your comments @syche. Thanks again for the input!

One other point: you were right about the rivnuts. They started to pull out from us just playing around with test fits even with the JB Weld. We redesigned to have them come in from the other side of the adapter so basically they are just being used as flanged collars, so they should not pull through the part even under some stress.

 

[syche]

Hi Syche, I was not planning to go over stock, at least not initially. 0.7 or 0.8 bar. Might push it to 1.0 to 1.2 but that would be about it.

Re the printing, I do understand the point re annealing. The final part will be printed in PA-6 in a printer that maintains internal temp at 90C which I think may lessen some of the need, but this is, at bottom, an experiment. Today we had a bit of a setback when the next test design came back with dimensions that were significantly off. The spacing between the two bottom studs on the 1HD-T intake manifold is 112mm by my measurement and the test article ended up at 109, which made it pretty much unmountable. And they are still trying to figure out why all the dimensions shrunk on this particular print. Sigh.

Hi, do yourself a favour and, do not bypass the annealing process, 5/6h, the longer the better.
I also have a high temp chamber printer and eveything that goes arround, you also need to dry for 3 to 4h minimum your fillement in an oven and then run the sppol in a hot drying box for good finishing reasults.

Attached my gen 2 and gen 4 water intercoolers and one of my many tested intake manifold adapter with heat and creep distorsion. Both of which i solved through my testings

 

[syche]

You need to spread the load better, rivnuts offers too little surfaces. Material choice is not the best in my opinion, too much creeping under load and humidity absorbtion once printed, it will bring you issues days or weeks after install. It is good for testing but over the long run not the best.

 

[John Young]

Can I get a copy of your build file? I think they call it...

 

[syche]

Sorry but i won’t share that, some files of my other parts made in the past ended up in some undesired hands and parts popped up on alibaba and ebay. I am sharing experiences to help you guys save time on your design / prototyping and not repeating my mistakes.

Some more input to help you consider the filament choice. You want material with the least moisture absorbsion possible, low creep, temps resistance post annealing over 170/190 degrees C. I measure the air temp before and after my ic, pre ic it very quickly go over 120 degrees underload, and reach 150/170 when pushed hard on long run.

 

[John Young]

Understandable @syche. And thank you for sharing your hard-gained knowledge.

We are having a devil of a time getting the dimensions right to bolt onto the two flanges. Still trying to figure out why. I will be trying the latest one in the morning.

 

[syche]

Understandable @syche. And thank you for sharing your hard-gained knowledge.

We are having a devil of a time getting the dimensions right to bolt onto the two flanges. Still trying to figure out why. I will be trying the latest one in the morning.

Nice work. On the design side, tips, avoid using radius/filet on any overhang parts, use champfers, they will print much cleaner /sealed/ out of your printer, especially if you use 0.6 nozle as you should for fiber loaded materials.

You should re design a bit your part to be able to use flanges, it is critical if you plan pushing the beast and not have deflexion. here are pictures of one of the many tests, to give you the idea, you will need that on both sides.

Once annealed if you have a good material creeping will be negigeable.

Don’t worry about making the bolts holes larger, you can push them to 9 or 9.5mm diameter, final assembly with a thin layer of good RTV

 

[John Young]

I now understand better what you mean by flanges. That does make sense...

 

[John Young]

For the past several days we've gone through a few more iterations. Getting the dimensions just right for the PA6 with carbon fiber was tricky. We had much less trouble with the white low-temp plastic material. Here's a photo of the difference printed using the same file with both materials.

We also made a few refinements to the design, including changing the crossover attachment so that the inserts protruded on the bottom two holes so that they would key into the reliefs already present in the aluminum 1HD-T crossover.

But this trial was unusable because of warpage.

Even after sanding a bit

Ultimately we changed machines and made minor dimensional changes (e.g. shrinking 0.5mm across only the long dimension.

 

[John Young]

The young engineer stayed late on Friday night to make the final adjustments and start the 15 hour (!) printing process. (That PA6 with carbon fiber is challenging stuff.) But he got it done and at around noon on Saturday we had the new iteration.

 

[syche]

Good progress, what nozzle are you using, it looks very thin, maybe 0.4mm? For carbon fiber loaded material you will be better off with 0.6mm, make sure to dry a few hours your roll in an oven and print with the roll on a sealed and possibly heated box. I did not experience warping on my carbon parts, maybe your bed or chamber are too cold.

 

[John Young]

Good progress, what nozzle are you using, it looks very thin, maybe 0.4mm? For carbon fiber loaded material you will be better off with 0.6mm, make sure to dry a few hours your roll in an oven and print with the roll on a sealed and possibly heated box. I did not experience warping on my carbon parts, maybe your bed or chamber are too cold.

I will ask the young engineer to respond to your specific queries and post the answers. And yes, part of the delays in this project have been the drying time for the fiber.

I have to say I am very impressed by this stuff. It is incredibly rigid and at this point with the infill we are using, is quite dense. I held a flame under one of the thin test plates to see if it softened and it really didn't. I think this is going to work on the cold side of the engine. Maybe not on the hot side, but above the pump / intake, I think it will be fine.

It was incredibly gratifying when the adapter slipped on all four of the mounting holes for the first time today, without adjustment. (I just added a video documenting this to my post immediately above, BTW.)

 

[John Young]

I did decide to try to make the fit just a little more precise by wiggling a drill around in all four insert locations to open them up a little. They had been a nice friction fit. I had always intended to epoxy them in anyways and this way there was a little more space for the JB Weld, which I wanted anyways.

The upper inserts were still enough of a friction fit that I did not need to worry about keeping the inserts in place. You can see the epoxy on the upper insert in these photos:

The painters tape did two things: it retained the inserts which were now a loose fit; and it also prevents any epoxy leakage from causing the adapter to get glued to the intake manifold.

I then bolted the adapter in place so that the epoxy will cure with the inserts located in a good location.

With one or two more iterations we could probably get it to be perfect, but I have only this one project pending and anyone else using this print file will likely have some printer-dependent variations that would require adjustment anyways.

The orientation/location of the end of the 1HD-T crossover is pretty good.

Certainly good enough that the coupling hose will take up any misalignment.

 

[John Young]

Here's one more photo: