Anyone with access to a 3D scanner and printer?

[Prairiehammer]

The individual vanes on the 1985-1993 side cover adjustable vents are prone to distortion, breaking and loss. I know, I know, many have eliminated the adjustable vent altogether, but I find the ability to open and close the vents advantageous from a comfort viewpoint. Closed in hot weather and open in cool weather; the vent used like that is so effective, that Debbie requests that I 'turn on the heater' (open the side cover vents) when she is chilled or 'turn on the air conditioner' (close the side cover vents, open the knee vents in the lowers and most effectively, rotate the Baker Air Wings to scoop air into the rider envelope).

 

However, many or most of the Venture's suffer from heat related distortion and ultimately breakage and loss of the individual vanes on the right side cover vent. Yamaha supposedly modified the plastic used in the side cover vents back around 1986-1987, with the intention to improve the durability of the vanes, but it seems it was a futile exercise (if it happened at all) for even late model Ventures suffer from the plastic degradation. The cause of the distortion and breakage on the right side and not on the left side (though, I have seen some with broken louver vanes on the left as well) is that heat rises and heats the right vent more than the left vent when the bike is shut down and placed on the side stand. That's Yamaha's theory.

 

Whatever the reason for the vane degradation, I find the adjustable vent useful enough to replace the missing vanes, if possible. Of course, the individual vanes are not available. When the side cover adjustable vent assemblies (Yamaha description: "grill, side cover") were available they retailed for $190-$200 EACH. That price apparently justifies sellers of used (but always broken) vent assemblies to ask high and unreasonable prices for their vents/grills.

 

Thus, my opening question. It would seem to me, that the original vanes could be replicated in ABS (as are the OEM vanes) fairly easily and inexpensively. The fly in the ointment, from my perspective, would be developing the 'X,Y,Z' information for the 3D printer, ergo the 3D scanner requirement. Are there any small batch manufacturers known to any of you's guys with those capabilities?

[tucson_sailors]

Interesting idea. I have a friend who has the 3-d printer, might also be a case of being able to get someone who is good with solidworks to design the vane. I've currently got my plastics off, I'll have a more detailed look and see if its the same vane from left to right, or if they have any size difference. Might also be worth seeing how hard to fab one from sheet metal or sheet abs - mine have cracked right and left, but not all of them. Mine is also a trike, so it doesn't use the kickstand anymore, so that may be why its both sides.

 

Glenn in Tucson

[Flyinfool]

I may be a touch old school, but I think that a caliper and my 3D cad software could recreat those vanes just as well as a 3D scanner, and in not all that much more time.

Unfortunately I do not have access to a 3D printer "yet".....

But the vanes are a simple enough part that someplace like protomold could make an injection mold for them fairly cheap and then crank out however many you want in whatever plastic you want. I'm thinking a glass filled black nylon that does not start to soften till around 350°F. ABS starts to soften at around 220°F.

 

This 3D pic is what I threw together in a couple of minutes just from memory and guessing at sizes, It would be no big deal to bring it into size. The mold would be around $1500 so there would have to be enough interest in replacement vanes to justify it.

 

I can output this part into the appropriate format for a 3D printer if we can find one.

[videoarizona]

I'm with you, Kevin. This might be a small profit cetner for someone with a 3D printer. Both the left and right side vanes that are used to cool off the motor and provide heat for riders would be nice to have.....plus the ones on the fairing as well.

 

I'm in...

[Prairiehammer]

I may be a touch old school, but I think that a caliper and my 3D cad software could recreat those vanes just as well as a 3D scanner, and in not all that much more time.

Unfortunately I do not have access to a 3D printer "yet".....

But the vanes are a simple enough part that someplace like protomold could make an injection mold for them fairly cheap and then crank out however many you want in whatever plastic you want. I'm thinking a glass filled black nylon that does not start to soften till around 350°F. ABS starts to soften at around 220°F.

 

This 3D pic is what I threw together in a couple of minutes just from memory and guessing at sizes, It would be no big deal to bring it into size. The mold would be around $1500 so there would have to be enough interest in replacement vanes to justify it.

 

I can output this part into the appropriate format for a 3D printer if we can find one.

 

Your memory is *fairly* good, Jeff, but the critical part that is missing in your vane is the 'bell crank' arm with pivot point that is actuated by the 'traveler'. In fact, that arm is the kicker for preventing me from making some vanes from some brass sheet and wire soldered onto the center line axis.

 

As for the $1500 mold, well, I believe a 3D printer would be more cost effective for 'on demand' or short runs.

[KIC]

Great idea. In fact I also lost half of my right side when I first bought the bike and took it to a car wash. without thinking, I hit the side with the spray and whammo, they were gone. I replaced them with a piece of ABS. In the summer, out here, we really need to block as much heat from the side as possible, so I tried to fabricate some type of removable piece that fit on the outside. Got some old heat shield from a friend and tried to bend it, and cut it, into a shape matching the inside vent area. That did not work well since I do not have the correct tools needed.

 

But, I did take the cardboard pattern that I was using and covered it with the aluminum tape used for A/C and heater units and covered it with that. Then I screwed them in.

 

It would be cool to make some ABS side covers to block the inside during the summer. Here are some pictures of my little attempt.

 

[tucson_sailors]

Bill -

 

lets talk about this on Sunday. Should be able to take the 5 screw mounting points on the inside of the plastic side cover and cut a piece of kydex plastic to fit. Its a thermoplastic so its moldable at oven temps, so would have to check the rating vs abs but could always put some of the silver insulation epoxied to it on the behind side similar to how you did the cardboard. Kydex comes with a smooth and pebble finished side, or could try and match paint job, etc. I had been thinking about getting some sort of perforated sheet metal to replace the panels and the triangular ones up by the radiator - no reason to limit to only one material while playing around with the idea.

$.02

 

Glenn

 

Great idea. In fact I also lost half of my right side when I first bought the bike and took it to a car wash. without thinking, I hit the side with the spray and whammo, they were gone. I replaced them with a piece of ABS. In the summer, out here, we really need to block as much heat from the side as possible, so I tried to fabricate some type of removable piece that fit on the outside. Got some old heat shield from a friend and tried to bend it, and cut it, into a shape matching the inside vent area. That did not work well since I do not have the correct tools needed.

 

But, I did take the cardboard pattern that I was using and covered it with the aluminum tape used for A/C and heater units and covered it with that. Then I screwed them in.

 

It would be cool to make some ABS side covers to block the inside during the summer. Here are some pictures of my little attempt.

 

[ATTACH=CONFIG]95648[/ATTACH][ATTACH=CONFIG]95646[/ATTACH][ATTACH=CONFIG]95647[/ATTACH][ATTACH=CONFIG]95645[/ATTACH][ATTACH=CONFIG]95644[/ATTACH]

[dingy]

3D printing for this part is probably not a good option. I have a high end 3D printer at work that I am primary user of. Upside of the printer we have is it has dual material capability in same run, so some materials can be blended, within programming limits of software to create different grades of materials similar to plastics.It will make materials from rubber band rigidity through ABS similar rigidity.

 

Problem for this application is two fold. 1st, with machine I have access to, the heat rating is to low for heat part would be subject to. Maximum temperature of an SLA (stereo lithography) based machine maxs out at about 175 F. Secondly, almost all 3D parts are fairly brittle, or prone to tear in softer durometer materials. FDM (fused deposition) models will have a better high end heat range, but they are not very good at producing small details on parts. FDM machines use a spool of filament, which is melted in very small amount, thousands of times and deposited on base plate to create part.

 

I have dealt with Protolabs on a number of plastic injection molds. They are a not a high end operation. Their costs are very high. If I need any modification to a mold, charge started at $1,000 just to start work on mold and went up from there, regardless of how minor change was. There base charge to set a mold in machine is $500. They do not even want drawings, all they will accept is a 3D model, preferably STP format. This means they do not attempt to hold any close tolerances in parts. I don't recall what there generic tolerance is, but I know it was a sliding scale. The larger the part the higher the standard tolerance would be. I will not deal with them again and have found better & more production oriented mold producers.

 

One of the factors that will make this cost prohibitive for an individual to pursue is the need for 3 separate parts to do this. Assuming the low potential volumes that would be sold, and by low I mean a run sufficient to do 250 individual vent assemblies with 4 assemblies on each bike. The 3 separate parts is an issue because one part there is a quantity of 4 needed. The other 2 parts only have 1 each used on an assembly. There are 2 different configurations of the vanes, and another part for the connector bar. The mold could be designed so as to include a cavity for each of the 3 pieces, with a shutoff gate in feed lines for each part, or at least the 2 that only one is required. This would enable mold to be ran so as to only fill parts needed on each run. I believe the mold halves have to be pulled from machine to reset the shutoff gate as they are inserted from back side.

 

Where it starts to get tough is material selection. I don't think ABS is what these are made of, due to flexibility needed to insert parts into outer housing that holds the vents and snap connector bar into place. Material choice is critical to these parts as they need to be somewhat pliable and able to with stand relatively high temps. So then material chosen may not be something molder has in inventory, minimum material quantity purchase are standard. A normal size bag of material is the size of a standard pallet and about 3 feet tall, 1500 lbs, way to much. Material required for 250 sets would be in 50-100 lbs range. You are going to pay dearly for this amount.

 

That's the readers digest version of why I don't think an individual is going to invest the money required just to get the tooling to do this.

 

3D printing is a great way to make a prototype or a limited run of parts. Issue with 3D printing is it is very slow, thus expensive. An injection mold machine for a part this small may have a cycle time of 20 seconds shot in the mold. A 3D printer will be far slower than that, possibly in excess of 10 minutes per part. The parts of of a FDM printer have a rather course finish to them, nowhere close to an injection part. Surface finish can be improved by dipping parts in acetone. 3D SLA parts have a better surface finish, but require a cleanup operation after printing to remove support material. Them a treatment in a 2% lye/water solution to remove film from surface if part is going to be painted.

 

The use of a 3D scanner for something like this is probably less than optimal as reasonably priced scanners have a resolution in the .010" to .020" range. While fairly small, it is not quite what is needed for these parts to fit together right. Jeff's suggestion for just manually measuring part would be my 1st choice.

 

So assuming a conservative guess of $3,000 for mold, another conservative guess of $4.00 per vent assembly. Then assuming 250 assemblies were ordered, that would be about $16 per assembly, without shipping charges for initial order. That would then translate into $64 for the four required vent assemblies. That is base cost, now factor in design time, transportation to you, then to end user, taxes, etc.

 

If anyone wants to create CAD design and do this, I can furnish web site for an offshore (China) molder that has a decent online estimator system that will give a fairly accurate quote. They can deliver samples usually in 3 weeks.

 

The above is my day job. I design & source small plastic (usually) housings for a new product development group in the Emerson Electric group of companies. I have 3 in jobs progress now that will require about 10 separate molds. I'm the mechanical design engineer. Bunch of other people design the sensors that we are bring to market.

 

Gary

[Prairiehammer]

Gary, thanks for the 'insider' expert points. Just popped my balloon, though.

BTW, the louvered vents I was talking about were the ones on the SIDE covers (your Tweety never had those), but the fairing 'knee' vents are valid for when talking about the complications and cost.

Thank you for the 'low down'.

I think I will re-investigate my idea of adapting a steel HVAC floor register. LOL

[skydoc_17]

Hey Kevin,

I too have puzzled over this for a number of years, seeing as I own two First Gens. I realize that the pics below don't solve the issue of heat in the cooler months, it does solve the issue of too much heat in the summer! Please have a look at the pics below, and if there was some interest, I would consider making another run on these parts. Thanks Dingy and Flyin'Fool for bringing the professional perspective to this project in regards to fabbing a replacement for the OEM parts. One of the things I miss the most about Yamaha is the fact that when they designed the MKII Venture, they were SO DARING! Now, they just seem to be "middle of the road". And in the case of a new Second Gen. NO ROAD AT ALL!

That's how I see it anyway.

Earl

Edited December 5, 2014 by skydoc_17
CRAYON BROKE!