These are a nice pair of Morimoto switchback LEDs, I think I have the contents of the bucket finalized. Just need to finalize the internal and external shape of the headlight, CAD it, and print.
Clear plastic sheet to get an approximate lens shape. Acrylic arriving in 2 days, will hopefully have a buck ready to heat form the lens. Time to start some CAD.
I assume you have made headlight covers before and know about the preheat cycle?
I have not, but my understanding is that preheating is required for Lexan, but not for Acrylic. That's the only reason I am going with Acrylic, even though it's not as ideal as Lexan (although Acrylic has great properties as well).
Design your part out of whatever material you are using. Take a photo of the part with a ruler adjacent to it. Import the photo onto your CAD drawing 2D grid. Adjust the size of the photo (lock your photo aspect ratios first or you will skew it) until the ruler matches your CAD measurements, i.e. 50mm on your photo ruler equals 50mm in your CAD measurements. in other words, resize photo, measure with the CAD program's line or ruler tool, repeat until you get it right. Then it's simply tracing over the photo on your 2D grid, then using your part measurements (use a ruler or calipers) to transform it into a 3D part. Although complex geometries get a bit difficult to coax into 3D for someone like myself who uses CAD about once every couple of years...
Then it's off to the printer!
This is just the outer shell of the headlight housing, will confirm fitment with it and then make a buck for heat-forming the Acrylic over it. Once confirmed, the internal details will be added. The Acrylic buck cannot be 3D printed plastic, as the softening temperature of Acrylic is higher than the softening temperature of the printed plastic. So I'll print the shape of the lens, then put a layer of cloth/resin over it.
Here's the lens shape, will go on the printer next. Hard for CAD to get a perfect mesh the way I want it, so will get a little body filler for final shaping prior to heat forming the Acrylic.
Spoiler roughly trimmed, 1 or 2 more skims of filler then seal and pull a 2 part mould. This will be practice for pulling hood and front fascia moulds.
What material are you printing your bucket out of? I've not had good luck with PLA or PETG for car parts, they get too soft in the sun. ABS and Nylon have worked well for me and I hear good things about ASA.
Shane Vacek
VRaptor SpeedWorks, LLC www.vraptorspeedworks.com
Turn-key GTM, SL-C & Ultima GTR Built to Your Specs!
Offering a full line of GTM Upgrades and Custom Parts
I can't seem to get the quote function to work at the moment, so returning to the preheat issue...
I have actually found that acrylic is worse than polycarbonate when it comes to bubble formation. Acrylic comes out "clearer" as a finished part, but it is much more brittle than the polycarbonate. IIRC we preheat the plastic to about 150 degrees for about an hour, then up to about 400 degrees until it is drooped correctly on the mold. Molds are really simple. Just negative shaped FG on a wood base for stability. Don't know what the flash point of the wood is. Kinda waiting for them to catch at some point, though no charring on anything like that yet.
There are good videos on YT about the preheat and forming process including specific temps, etc.
Did a rattle can guide coat followed by more sanding then a thin layer of Bondo glaze, then 180 grit. Added more glaze to some imperfections, then final sanding, seal, then pull a 2 part mould.
Spoiler ready to pull a mould, started making flanges with aluminum flashing but it's a pain to work with, going to use cardboard and packaging tape.
Headlight acrylic heat forming buck. Hot glued foam into the headlight bucket to get the general contour, seal with packaging tape, made a fiberglass buck, now just smoothing the contour with body filler, then can heat form the lens. Sunny and 42F this morning, not horrible.
1st time making a mould, and of course it's a 2 part mould... I really wanted to like the aluminum flashing for a flange but it's actually a pain to work with, hot glue doesn't hold well, etc. Cardboard and packaging tape, not pretty but it works.
Looks like that will work! Sometimes you just gotta make do with what you have and what works!
Shane Vacek
VRaptor SpeedWorks, LLC www.vraptorspeedworks.com
Turn-key GTM, SL-C & Ultima GTR Built to Your Specs!
Offering a full line of GTM Upgrades and Custom Parts
Shane Vacek
VRaptor SpeedWorks, LLC www.vraptorspeedworks.com
Turn-key GTM, SL-C & Ultima GTR Built to Your Specs!
Offering a full line of GTM Upgrades and Custom Parts
Thanks, Shane.
Just laid up 1/2 of the mould, hopefully it turns out OK. Waxed, brushed on pva, brushed on gel coat. Added a pool noodle support just for the heck of it.
That looks good to me! For the moulds that I've made, I found that large nylon rope works really well as a reinforcement....you don't have to fiberglass over it.....just lay it on the outside surface once you're done with your FG layers and soak it with resin and it naturally bonds to the wet layers of FG.
Shane Vacek
VRaptor SpeedWorks, LLC www.vraptorspeedworks.com
Turn-key GTM, SL-C & Ultima GTR Built to Your Specs!
Offering a full line of GTM Upgrades and Custom Parts
Spoiler 2nd half of the mould had a major gel coat disaster, pretty upset about that so moving back to the headlights.
Front hood contouring for the new headlight, bumper contouring will come later. Here it is with just the first layer of filler to make the general shape. I think this works out well and solves some of the issues I didn't care for with the Yamaha R1 headlights, primarily aerodynamic.
Spoiler 2nd half of the mould had a major gel coat disaster, pretty upset about that so moving back to the headlights.
Yeah....I was going to mention something when you posted that you put on the gelcoat and then were going to fg later. In my experience, the gelcoat will always separate from the mould if you leave it set too long before fiberglassing it. I never put down the PVA or gelcoat unless I know for a fact that I have time to fiberglass it the same day. Not sure if that's what happened to you?
Shane Vacek
VRaptor SpeedWorks, LLC www.vraptorspeedworks.com
Turn-key GTM, SL-C & Ultima GTR Built to Your Specs!
Offering a full line of GTM Upgrades and Custom Parts
Yeah that could certainly be the case, my understand is that the exposed layer of the unwaxed tooling gel coat won't cure until it's sealed by the fiberglass, and I've heard that is that it is OK to laminate the following day. But I won't do that again. Of all my setbacks on this project, this one really got to me.
Temps are falling here in the Midwest, so I'm wondering if that played a role, room was about 60F.
Gel coat was almost 2 years on the shelf so maybe I should have just started with new. Save a few bucks, you know where that ends up...
On the first side, I have a few acceptable blemishes like in this picture that I plan to repair with waxed gel coat.
I've always wondered if it does have to do with temp change. If you leave the gelcoat for a day and the temp changes, the part and the gelcoat expand/contract at a different rate and the gelcoat pulls away from the mould? Not sure what causes it, but it sure does ruin your day. My moulds that I make the Quarter Window Scoops from were really bad at this. I'd clean, prep, PVA and gelcoat them in the morning and then fiberglass them in the afternoon. About 50% of the time one of the moulds (was always the same one) by the time I came back from lunch, the gelcoat was already loose from the mould. I finally ended up cleaning the moulds with wax and grease remover to get all of the wax out of the mould and then hitting the whole mould with some scotchbrite to scuff the surface of the mould up a bit so that the PVA/gelcoat would stop coming loose. Haven't had a problem since.
Shane Vacek
VRaptor SpeedWorks, LLC www.vraptorspeedworks.com
Turn-key GTM, SL-C & Ultima GTR Built to Your Specs!
Offering a full line of GTM Upgrades and Custom Parts
Going forward, I'm just going to use standard unwaxed gel coat to complete the spoiler mould, the tooling gel coat is just tougher for multiple parts pulls which I don't need. I ordered some fresh stuff.
The fiberglass guy I had doing my stuff was using the Henkel/Loctite/Frekote products in the past, although it has been awhile since I had any mold work done, but they worked awesome. Expensive, but no issues what so ever. Beautiful parts.
I think I would talk to whomever you are buying your products from as they should be knowledgeable in fixing the issues you are having. I would think sticking with one line of products start to finish would be important.
I know for the above Henkel/etc. products, there was a very specific process of cleaning and coating the molds to make sure there were no issues and that parts would come out without sticking. I think 3-4 different products from that line were used. Can't remember for sure, but do remember that it was not cheap to do it right. I think my FG guy did things with production in mind, even though I only did a couple parts from each mold. Might be a cheaper way. I would talk to your supplier.
The only products I'm using are the Partall #10 film, gelcoat that I purchase from Carstens Industries and whatever quality polyester resin I can find at reasonable cost....which right now is True Composites.
As for scuffing the surface of the moulds that were giving me issues....as you may have found out, the tooling gelcoat is hard as hell. It's like scotch-briting cast iron. The coarse red scotchbrite pads barely scratch the surface, even with considerable pressure and scrubbing. I was having the issue with the gelcoat pulling away from the mould on almost every single piece from one of these moulds and I figured that if it releases that easily, as long as I have the PVA in there, it can't get any worse than the problems I was already having. The parts pop right out of the moulds and I haven't had an issue with them since I did that.
Shane Vacek
VRaptor SpeedWorks, LLC www.vraptorspeedworks.com
Turn-key GTM, SL-C & Ultima GTR Built to Your Specs!
Offering a full line of GTM Upgrades and Custom Parts
Thanks for the info, guys.
Shane, I've been using vinylester resin, about 2x the cost of polyester. What's the opinion on polyester vs vinylester? I'm assuming the FFR bodies are vinylester?
I'm definitely not a fiberglass resin expert. The general consensus is that vinylester is stronger and able to withstand impact better. For the parts I'm building, none of them are really "structural" or designed with an "impact" of any sort in mind. Since the parts are getting bonded to the body (in the case of the Quarter Window Scoops and Rear Body Vents) with an epoxy, and we aren't really dealing with any sort of "chemical bond" like with a wet lay-up of the parts, I just can't justify spending double on resin when I really see no advantage to doing so.
Shane Vacek
VRaptor SpeedWorks, LLC www.vraptorspeedworks.com
Turn-key GTM, SL-C & Ultima GTR Built to Your Specs!
Offering a full line of GTM Upgrades and Custom Parts
Looking at the rear of the car with the narrow exhaust exits. Trying to figure out if I should delete the recessed license plate area. Photoshop to the rescue. The large flat surface at the rear of the car doesn't look good unless it is broken up by the recessed area.
Just need to figure out where the license plate will go. Leaning towards central, under the exhaust. 2nd option is offset to one side.
Looking at the rear of the car with the narrow exhaust exits. Trying to figure out if I should delete the recessed license plate area. Photoshop to the rescue. The large flat surface at the rear of the car doesn't look good unless it is broken up by the recessed area.
Just need to figure out where the license plate will go. Leaning towards central, under the exhaust. 2nd option is offset to one side.
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Originally Posted by crash
