heinzboehmer's 2002 Topaz 6MT Coupe

[Obioban]

Man, I reeeally want an H2D. Prusa XL is also tempting, but the enclosure makes it so bulky.

Good to know about the filters! Will look into them.

Just hold off for the INDX, it's soon! 8-12 nozzles (depending on Core ONE or Core ONE L), not bulky, no pooping!

Can confirm filters work, having just replaced mine this week. Also, woodfill is a mess :P

[heinzboehmer]

I have a Bambu H2D, and it has been fantastic! Makes lovely prints, and using the dual nozzle for support material is cheating. Also, the 350mm print bed comes in handy. My printer is up in my office, and I used to get a scratchy throat/headache while printing when I first got it. So I bought https://voxelpla.com/products/vento-h2series-filter and a Levoit CoreS-P room air purifier, and all those problems have gone away. I honestly probably could have gotten away with just the Voxel filter and nothing else; it seems to work really well.

Man, I reeeally want an H2D. Prusa XL is also tempting, but the enclosure makes it so bulky.

Good to know about the filters! Will look into them.

[liam821]

Using a Bambu P1S, but I reeeally want a dual nozzle printer. That upgrade will probably be coming soon, but this one has been great for now.

And +1 to both things that Obioban said. The P1S has a filter on the chamber exhaust fan, but I still keep it in a separate room in the garage level that doesn't get much human traffic. I'll open up some doors to the outside if I'm printing stinky stuff for a long time and that seems to keep the fumes under control.

I have a Bambu H2D, and it has been fantastic! Makes lovely prints, and using the dual nozzle for support material is cheating. Also, the 350mm print bed comes in handy. My printer is up in my office, and I used to get a scratchy throat/headache while printing when I first got it. So I bought https://voxelpla.com/products/vento-h2series-filter and a Levoit CoreS-P room air purifier, and all those problems have gone away. I honestly probably could have gotten away with just the Voxel filter and nothing else; it seems to work really well.

[liam821]

We all have those days in the garage. Looks really good though. Those strut tower mounts came out incredible! They're way better-looking than the stock mounts, that's for sure.

[heinzboehmer]

Didn't have the smoothest time at the shop today, but let's start with what went well.

Fixture was super useful. Still requires a bit of creative hold down clamp placement for milling the bottom surface, but it's much better than before. The best part is how easy it is to mill down the surfaces under the nut flanges. Sides of the fixture are parallel to the slots, so just need to throw the assembly on the mill, find the center of the slot, then run the x-axis back and forth.

Quick before and after on one of the slots. You can see the witness marks from my test fit the other day in the before pic:




Only had to remove around 0.3 mm of material to get the surface flat. Happy with that.

Got through four slots aaaand then I was a dumbass:




I'm totally fine, but yeah, made the dumbest of mistakes to make on a mill. Ten points to the first person that correctly guesses what I did.

Anyway, with the mill broken, I wasn't able to machine the bottom surface flat, so I decided to clean the surface up on the belt sander instead. Came out great, not sure the hassle of setting it up in the mill is worth it:



I then went to press in the M10 studs and found the hydraulic press broken...

Sigh, arbor press it is.

At this point, I was feeling a bit defeated by the shop, so I half-assedly sanded the mounting surfaces for the braces and went home:



As mentioned earlier, this post processing is likely not all that necessary, given the quality of the surface. But to drive the point home, here's the surface on the 3D printed part next to the stock BMW cast part:



And finally, I threw the brackets on the car to put them to the test before they go for paint:



M10 studs torqued up no problem, so seems like the arbor press did its job. Worth noting that I did slightly decrease the size of the holes that the studs press into compared to the holes in the windshield mount, so that might have also played a role. Will carry that change over to the design of the windshield mount.

I'll do my best to put some miles on the car this week. Am also signed up for a laguna track day (lots of bumpy kerbs) next weekend, so that should be a good torture test for these parts.

[heinzboehmer]

That looks SO good! Well done man, you must be stoked!

Looks so good

Thank you! Very happy with how these came out.

[0-60motorsports]

Test fit went great. No adjustments needed anywhere:






Next up: milling.

Looks so good

[karter16]

That looks SO good! Well done man, you must be stoked!


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

[heinzboehmer]

Test fit went great. No adjustments needed anywhere:






Next up: milling.

[Slideways]

Please forgive my ignorance. I am unable to open the documentation provided. Do the design files provided allow one to have a tower strut brace machined that will mount to an e85 z4m ?

Just get a used E46 brace - https://www.zpost.com/forums/showthread.php?t=2020289

[heinzboehmer]

Please forgive my ignorance. I am unable to open the documentation provided. Do the design files provided allow one to have a tower strut brace machined that will mount to an e85 z4m ?

Other way around

This project retrofits the E85/E86 front triangulation braces into the E46 chassis.

I was just looking at a Z4M the other day with the silver BMW strut bar installed and the strut tower brackets looked very different to the E46 ones. Definitely lots of changes for hood clearance, but it did also look like the strut bar angle was a bit different.

[Sajk]

Please forgive my ignorance. I am unable to open the documentation provided. Do the design files provided allow one to have a tower strut brace machined that will mount to an e85 z4m ?

[heinzboehmer]

I can only imagine the feel of satisfaction Pal! Excellent work

Thanks! Feels pretty great to finally have the real thing in my hands.

Also, was talking to some friends about the parts and Bry5on mentioned that he printed the threads in his super knuckle and then just ran a tap through to clean them up. I usually do this with any plastic printed parts and it works great. Not entirely sure why I chose not to do it for this one, but I bet I was afraid that the bore would expand when cool and the thread fit would have been too sloppy. Anyway, have added threads to the CAD design, which should make it so that others don't need to go down the steel insert route.

[maupineda]

I can only imagine the feel of satisfaction Pal! Excellent work

[heinzboehmer]

Brackets have arrived!




Super happy with how they came out. Think they're gonna look even better once they're painted to look like the stock parts

The surface quality is amazing (much nicer than the stock cast parts), but I still think I should give them a very light skim on the mill. Designed this quick fixture that should let me flatten both the face that contacts the strut tower and the faces under the nut flanges:




Very similar design to last time, except for a couple changes:

1. Ditched most of the stiffening holes. Turns out the printed part was more than strong enough without them, so only added a few to keep it from warping/cracking when clamped in the vise. Chose that funky teardrop shape so that it can print without supports.
2. Added a big hole in the middle. This way I can add some hold down clamps and not just rely on the fasteners to hold the piece flat. Should make my life a little easier.

There are two other surfaces (E86 pickup point and stock strut bar pickup point) that should be flat, but I don't think I trust my skills enough to do those on the mill. There are a ton of features around these faces and I feel like I'm gonna crash into them so quickly. I might just sand those down flat(er) by hand.

But honestly, I don't think these things need too much work. Look at that surface!




The other bit of post processing needed is to tap the threads for the stock strut bar studs. Got to work on that aaaand immediately messed the parts up:



These things are super weird to work with. Not sure if it's the alloy (AlSi10Mg) or the manufacturing method (lots of localized heat on the exterior walls?), but they're incredibly gummy. The chips don't really break, but instead just kinda get smushed around. Very weird.

Anyway, tried tapping the M8 holes and immediately gummed the tap up. Didn't realize it in the moment and destroyed the bore. Here's what the tap looks like now. Those bits of aluminum are really wedged in there. Tap is now in the trash because I was unable to clean it up:



No big deal though. I figured something like this might happen, so I left enough material around the holes for timeserts. Was much more careful with the tapping this time around and managed to get through all four bores without issues:



Think I fully backed the tap out five or so times per hole before I was able to get through. Again, weird to work with.

In hindsight, it seems likely that the original holes were undersized. They're sized for an M8 tap in CAD and I just trusted that they were accurate in real life without measuring. I bet it would have gone way better if I had run a drill bit/reamer through before tapping. Oh well, next time.

Will try to get in the shop sometime next week. I'm excited to put these to the test on the car.