Posts
86
Joined
1/12/2015
Location
CA
ron727
7/20/2017 2:07pm
7/20/2017 2:07pm
Edited Date/Time
5/8/2021 1:18pm
I just got my 3D printed parts and surprisingly they work! Haha
Backstory: Last year, while riding some single track, I crashed and pushed my rad far enough back to rip the exhaust valve cables right out of the servo motor on my 2007 CR250. This caused some of the internal plastic gearing to strip but no big deal, I ordered up a new servo motor and I'm back in business.
Rebuilt the motor over winter and reassembled the bike, making sure there was NO slack in the exhaust valve cables because I was going for maximum performance haha. Long story short, I must have made them too tight and it ended up stripping some gears inside my new servo motor assembly.
Now I had 2 working servos with stripped gears and I wasn't buying a 3rd one. So I searched for these little gears until I reached the end of the internet, and nothing to be found. I called my geek brother-in-law because he's into computers and model trains, etc so if figured he would know where to get something like this. He suggested modeling them up and using an online 3D printing service to make them. So that's exactly what I did.
Since I'm too stubborn to ask for help, I figured out how to measure up the old gears and then modeled them up using an online CAD program. I uploaded the 3D file to Shapeways, selected the material closest to what RC gears are made out of and voila, 2 weeks later I have my parts! All for $20
The gears arrived yesterday. I made a small mistake on 3D drawing and didn't make the bore go all the way through on either gear so I had to run a drill bit through to open it up. I assembled the servo and tested it with a 9V battery. Everything seems to be working, now to field test it!
Backstory: Last year, while riding some single track, I crashed and pushed my rad far enough back to rip the exhaust valve cables right out of the servo motor on my 2007 CR250. This caused some of the internal plastic gearing to strip but no big deal, I ordered up a new servo motor and I'm back in business.
Rebuilt the motor over winter and reassembled the bike, making sure there was NO slack in the exhaust valve cables because I was going for maximum performance haha. Long story short, I must have made them too tight and it ended up stripping some gears inside my new servo motor assembly.
Now I had 2 working servos with stripped gears and I wasn't buying a 3rd one. So I searched for these little gears until I reached the end of the internet, and nothing to be found. I called my geek brother-in-law because he's into computers and model trains, etc so if figured he would know where to get something like this. He suggested modeling them up and using an online 3D printing service to make them. So that's exactly what I did.
Since I'm too stubborn to ask for help, I figured out how to measure up the old gears and then modeled them up using an online CAD program. I uploaded the 3D file to Shapeways, selected the material closest to what RC gears are made out of and voila, 2 weeks later I have my parts! All for $20
The gears arrived yesterday. I made a small mistake on 3D drawing and didn't make the bore go all the way through on either gear so I had to run a drill bit through to open it up. I assembled the servo and tested it with a 9V battery. Everything seems to be working, now to field test it!
The Shop
They are capable of rapid prototyping both aluminum and steel alloys now.
KC
Using additive manufacturing to make virtually any part out of Aluminim and Ti, and being able to do the mesh where extra strength isn't needed to reduce weight is awesome. Too bad the machine to do it cost upwards of a million dollars.
Crazy to think where this could go in the next couple years
Does this make me the first person to successfully repair a dirtbike using 3D printed parts? haha
Here's the materials data sheet if you're interested https://static1.sw-cdn.net/files/cms/materials/BDHA_data_sheet.pdf
We have a V8 engine block that took 90 hours to print at half scale, will be interesting to see how that measures up.
Everything we have done needs to have a fiddle factor in it to print the same size as the CAD data it is printed from.
Pit Row
Been downloading from www.thingiverse.com and printing other peoples designs
Doing my own designs in https://www.tinkercad.com/
I'v only printed in PLA so far but bought some ABS and some flex filament that I want to try this weekend.
My kids love it and have been learning how to use calipers and how to convert back and forth between mm and inches. (there like, why is there two systems)
It is just amazing what you can do and how you can customize things to just the way you want it.
Here is one of the companies featured in the article I received.
Think of it as internet speed... they tell you how fast it could be, they now how fast it should be, and you know what it really is.
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