3D Printing for the 12-Volt Industry
ago. Unfortunately, he wrecked the truck and had to get a new car. He didn’t have it two weeks and he was at the shop looking to get a new system that would “blow the old one out of the water.” I figured this would be a good project to try some printing on. My team and I decided to lose the little triangle corner window. I’m not sure who at VW thought that was a good idea, so we tinted it and decided to build over it. The first step in the process is to take photos, mainly from the side and from the door opening, toward the windshield. These are imported into CAD to have a precise template to draw from. Plus, it gives me an idea of angles of the pillar for later adjustment.
The pictures are imported into Fusion 360. Taking measurements from the actual pillar, I’m able to scale the drawing to the proper size. I start with the spline tool and do a rough outline of the potential pod shape. After having a basic concept of shape and size, I continue drawing features that will be brought out later in the CAD process. Things like trim rings, emblems, speaker locations, gap tolerances and even magnet provisions are sketched in prior to bringing the drawing into three dimensions.
Once the overall concept is determined, the part can be pulled into 3D. This is done using the “extrude” command in Fusion 360. Essentially what you are doing is adding thickness to your CAD drawings. From there we can chamfer, fillet, slice, make holes and whatever else needs to be done. Here, you can see the final pod with all the parts, as well as a colored rendering to give you an idea of the finished product.
Notice the tweet and mid locations are tilted. The mesh was modeled at one point so I could determine which templates I would need for pressing the grilles. When the drawing is done, I export it as an STL file and prepare for the actual print. I take the time to figure out how I want to do this. Some parts need to be printed cleaner than others, so I export the parts that are seen in the final product in a high poly count. The baffle is done in low poly. I do this mainly to keep my computer from hating me. From there I put the parts into the slicer software and prepare for printing. The baffles are done at .3mm layers with a 20 percent infill. Now I can mirror the part for the driver and passenger sides. facebook.com/MobileElectronics 51
