3d printers are becoming ubiquitous enough that the one-off parts are being modelled and reverse engineered all over the place, only to be made with soft materials that hardly stand up in a car interior, let alone an engine bay. I would start entering car model names in the Thingiverse search bar and seeing what people are trying to print for a given model. Work out the ones that are clearly not going to work in PLA.
There's a seat height adjustment gear in (at the very least) R53 Minis that has a tendency to break and leave the seat stranded at full up or full down. The mechanism rivets together and to the seat, so the "fix" is a new seat from yhe dealer or tear it apart and splice in good parts from your passenger seat or a junkyard seat.
Stock gear is plastic, always wished there was an aluminum or steel alternative, for the sake of durability.
Peabody
UltimaDork
1/8/21 5:29 p.m.
WonkoTheSane (FS) said:
RoboDrills are great, though. I've done some awesome multiaxis parts on them..
I used to service those. The only problems we regularly had was that the o-rings inside the spindle would leak, and you'd have to take the top end off to replace them. Sometimes you'd have to do the spindle bearings, but they were usually OK. Otherwise bulletproof machines.
In reply to obsolete :
Wow, yeah, that'd be outside of the scope of this little guy for sure.
You'd need to broach that, harden, then final finish it. That also wouldn't be any mild steel, you'd want a decent bit of carbon in it I'd guess.
I'd have to pass on that one, but that shouldn't be that hard of a job to make a newer, oversized intermediate sleeve like you said, the hard part is having the right spline profile tool.
JohnInKansas said:
There's a seat height adjustment gear in (at the very least) R53 Minis that has a tendency to break and leave the seat stranded at full up or full down. The mechanism rivets together and to the seat, so the "fix" is a new seat from yhe dealer or tear it apart and splice in good parts from your passenger seat or a junkyard seat.
Stock gear is plastic, always wished there was an aluminum or steel alternative, for the sake of durability.
Hah! One of the first things I was going to make for myself was a. Bronze gear for my chrysler seat.
Peabody said:
WonkoTheSane (FS) said:
RoboDrills are great, though. I've done some awesome multiaxis parts on them..
I used to service those. The only problems we regularly had was that the o-rings inside the spindle would leak, and you'd have to take the top end off to replace them. Sometimes you'd have to do the spindle bearings, but they were usually OK. Otherwise bulletproof machines.
Was the leaking on the thru-tool coolant setup?
No one has said FC door handles yet?
Peabody
UltimaDork
1/8/21 5:46 p.m.
In reply to WonkoTheSane (FS) :
Yes.
If I remember you had to dial the seals in and they could be very sensitive to misalignment.
There are a bunch of JDM yo trim pieces for the Miata that are in questionable taste but also in demand because they're rare and JDM. Yo.
Aluminum cups to go behind the door pull, for example. Or adapters to mount a single-post race mirror to the factory two-hole mounting flange.
Mr_Asa said:
In reply to obsolete :
What a strange design. Do you know why they had to make it that way?
Wonder if it was to clear the suspension, like the FC RX-7's extra long pinion.
Or if it was to get the driveshaft shorter for harmonics reasons.
jwagner (Forum Supporter) said:
Old audio tonearm parts. For example:
http://www.smetonearms.com/index.php?main_page=product_info&cPath=3_10&products_id=29
Those look neat! What are they and what do they do?
They are small plastic paddles that dip into a pool of damping fluid to dampen the tonearm resonances. Different sizes for different mass cartridges/needle compliance and resulting resonance frequencies. Here's a pic:
The top of the paddle is visible above the trough, attached at the top in the arm clamp.
The point of this is that high end audio stuff can be stupidly expensive and there's a lot of people using vintage "golden age of audio" type gear that can't get parts anymore. It's a lot like classic cars. At some point the spare parts get depleted.
jwagner (Forum Supporter) said:
They are small plastic paddles that dip into a pool of damping fluid to dampen the tonearm resonances. Different sizes for different mass cartridges/needle compliance and resulting resonance frequencies. Here's a pic:
The top of the paddle is visible above the trough, attached at the top in the arm clamp.
The point of this is that high end audio stuff can be stupidly expensive and there's a lot of people using vintage "golden age of audio" type gear that can't get parts anymore. It's a lot like classic cars. At some point the spare parts get depleted.
Wow, that's pretty wild.. I never even knew that existed but you've certainly sent me down a rabbit hole. Neat :) Thanks!