heinzboehmer's 2002 Topaz 6MT Coupe

[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.

[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.

[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.

[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.

[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

[liam821]

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

The H2C is multi-nozzle as well, but if you're not doing the multicolor, I don't really see a need, I'd save the money and go with the H2D. I think they're both pretty good printers, but the H2D/C has a significantly higher max nozzle temperature (350C vs 290C), which allows more engineering filament options and has a bigger print bed. The Bmabu also has a bunch of nice-to-haves, such as live filament flow calibration, and the AMS system (you can have 8 of them connected at once), which allows 25 colors at once (but will make a lot of poop, if you're into that sort of thing). The Bambu has better build quality, looks more "professional", and is less expensive. The Prusa, however, with INDX, is faster at tool changes, far easier to repair, and fully hackable and open source. I don't think you can go wrong with either; they're both good printers.

[Bry5on]

Happy H2D owner here. Still haven’t done a print with an integral TPU seal yet, which was my primary reason for upgrading from the P1S. I keep the printer on a separate VLAN since cloud connection is required for all the nicety wireless features.

[Obioban]

The H2C is multi-nozzle as well, but if you're not doing the multicolor, I don't really see a need, I'd save the money and go with the H2D. I think they're both pretty good printers, but the H2D/C has a significantly higher max nozzle temperature (350C vs 290C), which allows more engineering filament options and has a bigger print bed. The Bmabu also has a bunch of nice-to-haves, such as live filament flow calibration, and the AMS system (you can have 8 of them connected at once), which allows 25 colors at once (but will make a lot of poop, if you're into that sort of thing). The Bambu has better build quality, looks more "professional", and is less expensive. The Prusa, however, with INDX, is faster at tool changes, far easier to repair, and fully hackable and open source. I don't think you can go wrong with either; they're both good printers.

Prusa has a 400° nozzle, if you need higher temps.

print bed looks to be the nearly the same size as the core one L… which admittedly I’m going to update to when the indx is released.

…. not sure what you’re on about with build quality. The H2C I use at work feels waaaaaay cheaper/plasticy compared to my core one.

and the Prusa is not Chinese, which is why I never even considered a Bamboo printer. Regretted my DJI drone from day 1 because I didn’t stay strong on that.

[heinzboehmer]

The H2C is multi-nozzle as well, but if you're not doing the multicolor, I don't really see a need, I'd save the money and go with the H2D. I think they're both pretty good printers, but the H2D/C has a significantly higher max nozzle temperature (350C vs 290C), which allows more engineering filament options and has a bigger print bed. The Bmabu also has a bunch of nice-to-haves, such as live filament flow calibration, and the AMS system (you can have 8 of them connected at once), which allows 25 colors at once (but will make a lot of poop, if you're into that sort of thing). The Bambu has better build quality, looks more "professional", and is less expensive.

Yep, this is exactly what draws me to the H2D.

The Prusa, however, with INDX, is faster at tool changes, far easier to repair, and fully hackable and open source. I don't think you can go wrong with either; they're both good printers.

Aaand then this is why I look at Prusa.

I'm usually more drawn to the open source stuff, but my current Bambu printer has been flawless, so kinda torn. We'll see.

[heinzboehmer]

Also, quick and easy project today.

Not sure if this is a quirk specific to my car, but when the passenger mirror auto dip is enabled, the mirror never really comes back to where I set it. Seems to overshoot by a little bit. If I issue the recall memory command, it goes back to where it was before. Weird, but I've just lived with it since pressing a couple buttons after coming out of reverse isn't all that hard.

However, I realized that this is something I could automate with my BlueBus, so I did: https://github.com/tedsalmon/BlueBus...40e7d4364b630b

Feature works great and t3ddftw's codebase is a breath of fresh air compared to some of the stuff I get to interact with on a day to day basis. I've said it before and I'll say it again, the BlueBus is by far the most polished product I've ever installed on my car. Love it.

I don't plan on creating a PR for this feature, since it's very narrowly scoped. When it's turned on, the mirrors will go back to the memory you configure every single time you go out of reverse. Works fine for me since I'm the only one that ever drives the car and I know how to quickly turn the feature off, but it would need some work for broader consumption.

Anyway, happy with this extra bit of automation.

[Bry5on]

Weird, mine definitely returns to the correct position every time.

[heinzboehmer]

Weird, mine definitely returns to the correct position every time.

Early car quirk, maybe?

I've seen mentions of this behavior here and there, but it definitely doesn't seem like a widespread issue for this platform.

[0-60motorsports]

Also, quick and easy project today.

Not sure if this is a quirk specific to my car, but when the passenger mirror auto dip is enabled, the mirror never really comes back to where I set it. Seems to overshoot by a little bit. If I issue the recall memory command, it goes back to where it was before. Weird, but I've just lived with it since pressing a couple buttons after coming out of reverse isn't all that hard.

However, I realized that this is something I could automate with my BlueBus, so I did: https://github.com/tedsalmon/BlueBus...40e7d4364b630b

Feature works great and t3ddftw's codebase is a breath of fresh air compared to some of the stuff I get to interact with on a day to day basis. I've said it before and I'll say it again, the BlueBus is by far the most polished product I've ever installed on my car. Love it.

I don't plan on creating a PR for this feature, since it's very narrowly scoped. When it's turned on, the mirrors will go back to the memory you configure every single time you go out of reverse. Works fine for me since I'm the only one that ever drives the car and I know how to quickly turn the feature off, but it would need some work for broader consumption.

Anyway, happy with this extra bit of automation.

I need to do this too. Do you have a link to the latest Bluebus firmware?

[oceansize]

Feature works great and t3ddftw's codebase is a breath of fresh air compared to some of the stuff I get to interact with on a day to day basis. I've said it before and I'll say it again, the BlueBus is by far the most polished product I've ever installed on my car. Love it.
.

One man, maybe two man, show. As you well know the less people that touch a codebase the better, and more consistent, its going to be (well in most cases). I remember there was a pop3 email program written back in the day that was super clean and noted as such. I was like man, do you know what I would give to code to a long established spec and not user whims? lol.

Anyways, I need to get a BlueBus, but I'm torn between that and putting in another touch screen for CarPlay.


Side note from the days of Java's garbage collection being a big thing, my favorite quote to this day: 'If Java had true garbage collection, most programs would delete themselves upon execution", just apply that to almost every app or sizeable codebase ever written.

[George Hill]

Feature works great and t3ddftw's codebase is a breath of fresh air compared to some of the stuff I get to interact with on a day to day basis. I've said it before and I'll say it again, the BlueBus is by far the most polished product I've ever installed on my car. Love it..

One man show.

Fixed that for you.

Teds great. A custom product is one thing, but customer service after the fact is second to none. I generally don't install aftermarket radios in cars but I broke my rule recently and remembered why I don't. But not with the BB, its just so good I keep them in stock.

And he's a true enthusiast who is building a full conversion M3 touring. 😎