Dateline - 04/14/2013 - I didn't do much work on the car this weekend. I had to take care of the other Jaguar. It needed a 90K mile service, plus an emissions test and new tabs. Took care of all that (and got a haircut, no, a real haircut, to boot!). That was most of my Saturday. I did try do some work with my 3D printer that was car related though. I'm trying a new type of plastic called ABS instead of PLA in my printer. PLA is easy to print with because it heats at a lower temperature (185 degrees) and doesn't warp a lot. ABS needs about 230 degrees and a very warm bed to print on (around 110 degrees) otherwise, it will warp, which makes it much harder to work with. The advantage of ABS is that it is not biodegradable like PLA. So, I want to make sure that any parts I build that will be on the car are in ABS not PLA.
The problem I've found is that my hotbed will only go up to about 80 degrees, not hot enough to keep the ABS stuck to it, so when it warps, it actually detaches from the bed and ruins the print. I need to do some research to see if I can get the hotbed hotter. I've seen a couple of blog postings about that, so we shall see.
Another car related 3D item is the center indicator bezel was printed in PLA and I want to print it in ABS. The problem is that I lost the model I used to create the original because of a hard drive failure. So I spent about two hours on Sunday recreating the model. Tedious! And I really hate doing things a second time. But that's what you get for not doing enough backups!
So, not a very productive car weekend. But I'm going to try to spend some time after work this week to get some stuff done. Looks like it will be warming up a bit this week, so that will make it easier to go out in the garage!
