Intake Design and Building: How to?

Looks great. I would just use a carbide in a grinder to finish that off. Lathe seems overkill but if I had one I probably would think the same way!!

Mr_Asa said:

In reply to APEowner :

It worked great, but I'm getting irritated at myself for how often I make something for a one-off use.

That's a perfect use for a 3d printer though.  It's better than machining a one-off fixture.  

Setup the lathe to cut an angle.

I might should get longer bolts for the throttle body.  That's like an eighth an inch more that I could thread, and this is without the gasket.

Hey kids! Do you like pie cuts?  Wanna see me slice nine degrees on each of my slices? Wanna copy me and have torque like I will?

So I've been pondering this little guy on the end, the curved section.

mke suggested pie cuts, and when that guy makes a suggestion on how to fabricate something you should work on it.

So let's take a look at pie cuts.

Our Pac-Man shape here is the shape of what we need to modify.

So lets see what we can do  Will one cut at ~75° take care of it?
Uhh, no.  Absolutely not.

So what if we make 'em really small?
That looks pretty good.  

Lets make 'em RILLY RILLY small!
Oh, now that'll be pretty.  Its a 1° slice, repeated 75 times.  Great result there.

What we're seeing here is the start of one of the basics of calculus.  If you take an infinite number of infinitely small slices and place them next to each other, you get a perfect circle.  Unfortunately, I don't have anything near able to make 1° slices, nor do I have anything able to weld it.  So lets go back to the real world.

Lets go with 3x 25° slices.  Its not great, its not bad, its just kinda ok.

Now that we have the measurement, let's get to work.

Get your safety gear and lube (I really like the CRC stuff shown for cutting aluminum on a chop saw, it clings to the surface,) set your angle, make your first cut, wonder what you did wrong.

Realize that an angle of 25° on each side ends up measuring 50°, reset your saw.

Much better.  The gap is a bit concerning, but hey, I can deal with that.

And we're good!  That bottom weld looks pretty solid.  Rest are just ok, but hey they're there

Next time on This Old Intake, we work on the back angle.

This is so cool to follow the progress of. Also makes me realize my own ideas for a custom intake are much more optimistic than I thought. Great work here.

how did I miss this thread?! this is great work - definitely the learning curve but I love the CAN do attitude dude! 

I'm going through a similar battle, to print the whole thing like you mentioned is too much and the process listed (SLA) is wrong. don't use SLA for that but there is certain filaments for extrusion  (FFF/FDM) that would be a good waste cast option.  Printing it entirely out of metal is not worthwhile either (DMLS) 

I like you using the 3d printed dies to help press the shape this is an underrated use cases for 3d printers. The other (expensive) option is to print the transition:

print the complex parts

use the off the shelf parts where you can same time/energy. 

In reply to fidelity101 :

Are those pics stuff you're working on?  Would love to check out a build thread on that! 

Thanks for the kind words and encouragement, guys.  Not that it happened recently,, but every time I doubt someone comes along and gives me some supportive words.

You're awesome, dude.

This is really great stuff and I'm impressed. I really like how it's all happening in the mouth of your garage. Spilling out into your driveway workshop. I can't wait to see this on the engine.

In reply to Mr_Asa :

yup! after ~15 years of stock intake manifold ownership it was time to upgrade!

https://grassrootsmotorsports.com/forum/grm/intake-design-and-building-how-to/186000/page7/#post3446761

pages 18-20 are heavy intake stuff, a few pages back is the printed inconel exhaust too :) 

In reply to fidelity101 :

Wrong thread, but I found the FrankenWankel one.  Nice stuff there.

No lyrics today.  Just work.

We'd already seen that a 30° angle would work for the bottom, so that's already cut. Slap it up on there and see what fits and what doesn't.
There's roughly 3/8" of a gap there on the bottom.

So we mark it at 3/8", mark where the angle ends, then mark from 3/8"-> 0" on both sides.

Trim it real good like, slap it in, tack and burn, take a glamour shot or two.

Now, I wasn't sure WTF to do here.  I guess I've been thinking about it in the back of my head, cause I thought of marking it with some tape for a transferable circumference.  The results speak for themselves.  I'm dangerously close to thinking I know WTF I'm doing here.

I went a little conservative with the cut and it turned out to be a good decision.

The top and bottom of an LS head are parallel, the top of the 300 block is near enough to flat when mounted in the underhood that I didn't care to look up any exact figures.  Marker in two spots to give reference marks.

And here we are.  Need some minor things, injector bungs, MAP sensor placement, PCV valve and other vacuum sources, etc etc, but that's all downhill from here.  Gonna need to go over the welds and clean up the inside some, but now I can start looking at other aspects of the cylinder head.  Maybe the lifter galley cover is next.

Nice; awesome progress! Love seeing this come together.

So, we've been on pause for a little bit. Why?
Well, remember this post?  Remember the bad welds that followed? 

Mr_Asa said:

Well.  This is going nicer than this welder normally does.

More pics when I'm done.

 

 

These were with a free Clarke 135 Hotshot Spool Gun. I haven't been 100% happy with it, but I was given it for free and how can you complain about a free spool gun?
So, I did a thing, Kickstarter followed through and I have been playing with it for a bit.  Its... well, its pretty damn nice.  I have to unplug the clothes dryer to use it at proper voltage.

Now, I guess I have to learn how to use this thing properly.  Off to a decent start though.  Was mostly doing fusion welding, which was only really possible cause of the heavy welds on the outside

I did kinda screw up.  Got in a groove and welded it 100% the full length, now its warped a bit so I'll have to spread it and heat it a bit to allow it to bolt down again.