3D printed car spoiler

In the page there is one very good and perfect example, how to use 3D printing in prototyping and designing in real life.

Car customising is very popular industry and the faster and newer designs you can make the more innovative and successful you are!

Car body and exterior parts are never box shape (only old Volvos 😊) but almost every time they are symmetrical!

Therefore it is very time consuming and cost - effective to produce new design in classical - mold, clay - way.

3D printing opens up the whole new industry for that! You can scan car body parts, make adjustments in CAD program and afterwards print them out and make mockup models!! Engineering is better with 3D printing!

Below is example of how to manufacture custom rear spoiler. We don't talk here a lot about spoilers , but more about the whole process and idea!

PS: pictures below aren't always made from the same spoiler. But overall consept is important!

3D scanning overview

3D scanning is a process which use some kind of device to analyze an object from the real world. It collects all the data in order to recreate its shape and appearance in computer program digitally.

Thanks to this process, the object can become a 3D model, which could help you as a base for the 3D project you are about to develop, but it can also be useful to reconstructing, analyzing, or simulating ideas.

Pildi allikas: https://bit.ly/3URnebu

Different machines and methods exist to 3D scan objects.

laser 3D scanning
photogrammetry
structured light scanning.

The choice of the 3D scanning technique will be made regarding to your project or its context (and scanner price)

A 3D scanner can be based on many different technologies, each with its own limitations, advantages and costs. Because almost every scanner uses some kind of light technology, there are some limitations- e.g too dark, not enough shiny, too reflective or not enough transparent objects etc.

Simply put, there are 3 categories of 3D scanners:

1000 EUR
10 000 EUR
50 000+ EUR

They all do basically same thing, but price comes with presicion and post-processing program.

50K and more are scanners used by professionals and in industry level.

1000 EUR scanners are cheap and not so precise (0.05mm), but for homeuser they are enough!!

In the examples below we used Revopoint POP scanner- price is about 600 EUR and result is more than better!

Scanning process

Using 3D scanner is relatively easy and simple process. You just have to know your scanner settings and point 3d scanner onto your detail in various different angels. Scanner is making millions of little "pictures" which scanner software is combining and making into one model!

Difficult part of scanning is hand movement. It has to be smooth and stable otherwise it`s difficult to capture all the data points! This is the part that needs practicing and some experience!

Pictures on the right are examples of "how to" 3D scanning is done.

You can see, that on the bigger parts MARKERS are used.

They will make virtual "map" for scanning light!

In the pictures you can also see 3D scanning spray- it is providing a clean, even surface for your 3D scan, even with reflective, transparent or highly textured surfaces.

Usually these sprays have special, evaporating formula which requires no cleaning after- it usually disappears without leaving a trace!

This is whole new topic, but there are a LOT of different videos and tutorials online!

After scanning comes the post processing part with the software!

This is maybe the most demanding part- you should have quite capable computer and skills to choose right settings.

Your final file can be saved as .obj or .stl.

Both of them are suitable for 3D printer Slicer program.

Next part is like "normal" 3D printing. We had our design in .stl and we used slicer program to make G- code from that.

We used relatively cheap 3D printer and 0.8mm nozzle- layers are high, visible and structure is little bit weaker, but we got what we needed- curvy shape and size of our spoiler!

Picture on the left has one small defect- we used too fast printing and quite high overall part size. To make it adhesive with heatbed we used bigger heatbed temperatures (ca 70C).

That temperature caused us new problem- "elephant foot"

It happens when detail is too high, layer height is big and also temperature for heatbed is big.

Because we glued our details together, it wasn't big problem for us. But it is important quality setting and is easily avoidable.

Next is the FUN PART

We covered our glued rear spoiler with epoxy and carbon fibre/glass matt.

Doing so, we can see real final result of our process.

Of cource it needed a lot of post-processing and clearing but end result is visible- with very small amount of work we could get very good looking result.

And what´s the most important benefit of 3D printing/designing?

If we want to make any changes, we just have to open our file and push/pull/manipulate outer body of the spoiler model! And it is a new part!