3D Printing a New Gear Shift Knob and All About Annealing PLA
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- เผยแพร่เมื่อ 23 มิ.ย. 2018
- The gear shift knob I 3d printed some time ago was getting to the point of needing to be replaced. Alex from Proto Pasta was around, and we tested annealing the PLA to see if that would help with being in the heat of the car.
YES, video is long, but there is some good info packed in there :)
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of course he drives a wrx! you such a cool guy! respect from germany.
Hey Joel I know that this will probably get buried but I want you to know that you not only got me into 3D printing at 14, but helped me find the cars I love. Before you’re shift knob video I had heard a little about Subaru but had not looked into it. After I looked up the wrx series and fell in love. Now my first car is a 2000 Impreza 2.5 rs sedan manual. Thanks for everything
should have bought an evo instead
@@evoFTMFW lol keep dreaming
I like the black better, especially with the interior of the car; it looks more like an OEM part.
TheWeb Expert: Agreed. And it is a much better material for this application. The blue one looks like a crappy plastic shift knob, which it is.
Yeah that's one thing that irks me about things other people 3d print. It's so common to see colors that just clash with their application. Sure black and white are boring but do you really need everything you 3d print to be that obvious? I think people not being able to tell is when you've done it right.
why would you want a custom part look like a run of the mill one
Annealing PLA in the oven almost always results in an increase in size along the z-axis. This is simply because it's releasing stress along the layer lines. You can measure the difference pre and post annealment and adjust the size of your part in your slicer by the difference as a ratio, print a new one, anneal it, and it should be about the correct dimensions. =)
fancy!
also shrink in Xdirection. All depends on the temperature and total time your print been left in the oven. Use a lower tem but longer anealing time would result better appearance
Sometimes there is another nut underneath the shift knob (installed first) that is used to tighten and lock it in place to prevent rotation.
0Calvin Jam nuts or lock nuts (a nut on the bottom ) are great for locking something like a shifter knob in place. Because what would you do if the knob gets tight at the point where the lettering or shift pattern on the knob is upside down. A jam nut is the solution. On a plastic print this would require a metal sleeve to be glued into or melted into the knob so the jam nut has something hard to lock against. Without a metal insert the jam nut would distort the plastic as the plastic is not hard enough to withstand the force of the jam nut over time.
He could hollow out the top piece a little more and then the jam nut could be put directly on top of the nyloc nut. That should hold it in position.
Put a thin washer between the knob and the jam nut.
It's OK, he baked it in an oven for five minutes so it's hard as a rock now, no problem.
But the point is he can clock the shifter in the right orientation with the lettering facing the correct way, and then tighten down the jam nut to hold it in place. Otherwise it might tighten down at the wrong position.
Good practical example. For mechanical designs I suggest test print annealings a cube so you can measure dimensional accuracy changes with different brand filaments and different infill settings. Also be careful about prefitting parts during annealing. The annealing process can effect the fitted part as well don’t forget. So be aware if the fitted part contains plastics they can deform, strengthened metal components may weaken to an unsafe range, plus of course some components may have protective oils on them (especially in automotive) which could catch fire in an oven during annealing. When going ahead with such DIY projects for possibly dangerous objects (vehicles, machinery, etc) first consider a worse case scenario if the part fails during operation, print layers are the weak point in prints so changing print orientation even if it means heaps od supports is worth it for a stronger print. Part of prototyping is to also take a first build and harshly test it to failure to see where design improvements can be made foe improving performance, safety and comfort. As always, Joel, high five for another useful video!
The NylonX looks good. But the blue is more you. All you need is blue NylonX.
Yes! High Five Blue NylonX! Make it happen Joel...we believe in you!
it won't be easy (the carbon is working as pigment here as well) but Joe will find his way, I'm sure!
Something tells me there will have to be a lot of reduction in CF content in order to overcome. Maybe a reasonable compromise in stiffness can be made for color addition. We can hope. :p
NylonG?
personally I like the black, but that is just my personal opinion in colors, especially for cars. Greyscale colors tend to match better with cars.
However, using the blue really draws attention to itself, and therefore the nature of it being 3D printed, makes it a good representation of yourself (the 3D printing Nerd, that is)
Could paint it and add some lacker to lock in the color
You two make such a wholesome pair! This is amazing!
Not only that, annealing prints is a topic I've been looking more into so I love this video.
Love when people using 3D printing for practical staff. Great work Joel.
What? Dungeons and Dragons characters are not practical?
You do a good job of explaining things, Joel. You make a great teacher.
I love how a lot of the big 3D printing guys are also avid car enthusiasts! Makes me feel i may have a future in this field XD
Next time you run into a situation like this, go to the auto parts store and get some “loctite”. It is a thread locker that you put on a few drops on the threads and it will set up and won’t move.
Careful though, loctite will eat certain plastics.
Lol no
Another good option's to use brass threaded inserts. Just heat 'em up and plunge them into a snug hole in the plastic. I can't say I've ever seen one large enough for a shifter, though. They're all kinds of amazing for mounting hinges and latches on printed cases.
Hey man, you're great on the camera and also guiding others on camera. Good stuff.
you could probably build some sort of box that could be filled with a light sand or something similar to hold smaller pieces for annealing to prevent as much deformation as possible. Play sand would possibly be too heavy to accomplish that, but I'm sure there's some sand-like material that would be light enough
Thanks for this video.. I had to print a new mount for my dashcam and being in florida I need to use the HTPLA. It worked GREAT!
I made one my self ! I did not know it was your model. I personally chosen ABS and smoothed it after. The result is incredible
I love the hawkeye WRXs so so much, I have a 2009 wrx too :) it makes me happy to see my favorite 3D printing youtuber loves the same car I do.
I'm happy to ve found your channel! Same mentality but in a bigger channel and way :D
I try a lot of stuff in my videos related to car parts, so thanks for this one!
Nice timing! Yesterday I started thinking about printing a shift knob based on the millennium Falcon's hyperspace throttle levers, I'm glad to get some pointers on that!
Great video. Good to see some detailed annealing knowledge being shared. I've become a huge fan of HTPLA. I've got some pieces that spend a lot of time on the dash of the car, and over a couple of years have held up well. Designing pieces a little thicker usually avoids most noticeable shrinkage. I do usually print two pieces, and anneal one, just to have a comparison. Also - I usually place my piece in a cool convection oven, then heat it, then let it cool, leaving the piece in the oven. I find that if I start messing with the piece, it is more likely to change shape. Letting it cool slowly can help it retain the correct shape.
Wow that edit of Shaft on his pinky when the shaft going in the knob is impressive.
Carbon fiber black looks pretty awesome Joel.
I think a better option is to thread the bottom part of the shifter on first, then put a second nut down from top until it connects with the bottom nut. This way it works like a jam nut, and you can modify the top portion of the shifter to have a hollowed section to allow the jam nut to sit in. This doesn't have to hold the nut like the bottom, just hollowed out to allow it to be in any orientation. Even the nylock has the ability to work itself loose over time.
Hi Printing Nerd and thanks for the awesome videos!
A little tip for you If I may: instead of grinding which is tedious and messy, what you can do is to use a basic wood chisel and a blowtorch. Heat the chisel with the torch and once hot enough it will carve your print like butter.
With a bit of practice you can get very clean results, plus it's super quick, I do this all the time.
To clean the chisel (for instance if you change to another color), just burn the plastic off it with the torch until it's completely gone.
Same technique works if you want the nuts to be tightly fit into your prints: put the nut on a screw, heat it with the blowtorch and put it in place. It won't ever move again.
Can’t wait to get my hands on some of this filament
I like the blue one!
Giving me ideas for my Subi thanks!
Thanks for sharing and as always Keep Building👍
carbon fiber knob looks better!!
Don’t like blue ?
You smurfcist ... :(
🤣😬
Go buy one at walmart then. Should probably buy some carbon fiber vinyl wrap fo your hood while your there.
@@stich1960 lmao
When "sanding" or grinding like that, (or cutting) do it under water or in a water bath. The cooling will keep it from melting.
#HighFive !!!
I did some wet sanding on my parts and it worked well but didn’t know what to do with rotating tools
The high-five blue with the carbon fibre would had been better, else black and red all the way, to go with that black interior.
_But_ if you really wanted to make an interesting series about flexible and annealed plastics, how about making the whole interior of your car high-five blue?
+1 for the carbon fiber version! that matt black just looks awesome
If you ever end up doing another shift knob you use embedded nuts in the top so it ends up perfectly smooth and doesn't collect any grime in the holes. Just have the print pause part was through to drop in the nuts and then resume printing. Thanks for sharing!
You have a WRX? You're basically living my best life.
I used some nylock nuts to deal with vibration loosening on the pizza rack on the front of my bike and they worked wonders. Good call.
Thank you Sean for not disappointing. The George clip was perfect!!!
If you still have a issue with it twisting, you could remodel the top and use 2 nuts to lock it in place.
Oh, and sorry Joel. I love blue, but the carbon fiber would look awesome!!!
Cool video 👍 definitely the blue...oh and love the ‘Ivan Persuader’ moment 😬😬
I made a master sword hilt shift knob for my FJ cruiser shifter and so far so good. But I'm definitely looking at this now
I loved your channel before I saw this video but I have to say now that I have even more respect for you now that I know you drive a subie!
Really useful information.
I vote for the #highfive blue. Mainly because it sort of goes with what I associate Subaru with.
Thanks again Joel.
My first 3D printer arrives today from Prusa.
I look forward to using the information from all your videos in my 3D printing endeavors.
I think you should do the carbon fiber/red but instead of sanding the inside to make room for the nyloc nut, add a spacer between the top and bottom half that is high five blue - just a few mm tall. Once assembled, from the side it will just look like a band of blue.
DUDE. holy cow that's brilliant
I like that idea but why not a spacer ring of the same red used for the WRX lettering? I think the carbon shifter is way sexier than the blue.
because it's Joel, he's gotta have that high five blue in there!!!
Epic! A really useful tool!
Thermal plastics deform over time when a constant force is applied. This is called “creep” and can be avoided by using fibers like CF to reenforce the plastic so the polymers don’t stretch out as much.
So the CF Nylon would perform better over time because the CF would mitigate the creep?
3D Printing Nerd that’s what I would expect. But with small forces the creep would be pretty small anyways and take longer to deform.
No. Please stop the myth that CF impregnated filament is stronger or better in any way. That's not how CF works. In a polymer filament, it just acts like a contaminant and makes the plastic weaker.
Shrinkage! Love George, he is my spirit animal lol
This is good to know. I did abs for my 4X4 snorkel cage hoping to keep it from warping in outside heat and forces. But I'd love to get creative with HT PLA
I like the nylon X because as you mentioned early on in the video it will not smooth out where you grab the shift knob and plus the black contrasts well against the red.
The black looks great! it blends in but if you want a colour pop the blue looks better. keep well
Cf Nylon... definitely. Matches the interior. 😎
I really like the carbon fiber with the red. It looks really good.
I printed a ram-air intake/MAF sensor adapter for my car in PETG. Originally I just did it for fun and was going to take it off after a day. To my surprise, the engine bay temps weren't hot enough to warp the part and I decided to keep it in. About 60k miles since the installation and it's still going strong.
That's amazing!
Glass transition point its about 80 Celcius, so its normal that survived the insaide car temp
Great re-visit of a practical application. It also illustrates the progression of available printing materials from when you first made the knob. I’d always go with the best material I had on hand. BUT HF Blue is you !! I saw the comments below regarding the extra nut and I was thinking the same. Also like seeing the iterations to address issues. Too many vids are “perfect” - they only illustrate and not teach.
Of course the blue one 😍
Black matches the interior better! Great @IvanMiranda mention!
Carbon fiber looks great but if I had my own filament I’d use it for everything
hey Joel, i used a nylock, and in the top part of the ball where the cavity is i put a 1 or 2 ounce round fishing weight. between the nylon and the soft lead, i haven't had any free play in the shifter, and best part is, it added more weight so its not so light. just a thought.
You should be able to anneal standard PLA, but at a lower temperature, Thomas Sanladerer made a video about this.
Yeah, but you can figure out something knowing it.
Definitely the blue one !!!
Nylon lock nuts are a good start, but, like any nut, they only work really good if they are screwed against something that gives resistance. On the gear shift however, it can turn further as it is not pressing against something. The lock-nut just makes it a bit harder to turn meant to avoid wiggling itself loose in vibration environments.
So you essentially want a counter-nut. Screw down the bottom part until it is located as you want it, then put _another_ nut on top of that and tighten it against it - now these two nuts are locked into place. This part will not turn or move anymore. Of course, now you need to design a larger diameter hole in the top part to house the full outer diameter of the counter-nut, but looks like there is enough space.
You could also use some loctite. Blue loctite will lock the knob into place after it's cured and will resist most of the forces you'd put on a shift knob. Or you can use red loctite and lock it in good and curse yourself if you ever want to remove it or change it.
Thanks for the post-mortem on the old knob. I hope you do another on the annealed part in a few years. I make a lot of models, cosplay doodads, and occasionally travel cases for tablets and the like, and I've been pretty curious what a summer in a hot car would do to them.
You can also anneal regular PLA... but it's much slower, the correct temperature can vary pretty significantly so you need to experiment to find it (probably lower than a specialized annealing PLA), and it can be tricky to keep it from deforming during annealing.
All you need is a grub screw on the base of the shifter knob below where the boot slides on to screw it against the shifter shaft. Or as others stated using nut before putting the knob on. Either way....great knob...love the High Five Blue!
Carbon Fiber and Candy Apple Red .. Those look awesome!
I'd love nothing more than to be able to print small accessories that I need. Great use of your skills and a great video! What would be an everyday item that you would print but haven't?
His oven sounds legit. I may want to see it someday..😉
Nice Video! 👍
I'd go with the black/red one.
The blue is very nice, and a trademark ;) But I do like the way the carbon fiber one had the screw heads showing and kind of matching the carbon, gave a more race car part feel, and that candy apple red stood out way more. I think the blue is the best though because it fits you better.
Have you tried to use heat-set inserts instead of regular nuts? They make these kinds of parts super easy.
0Calvin has the right idea. Your Nylock is good, but it will probably become loose eventually. Nylocks are actually supposed to be one use only because the nylon is unthreaded when new and when the nut is put on a bolt the first time threads are cut by the bold thereby making a tight squeeze that keeps the nut from backing off. Over time with the heat of the car the nylon may soften and conform to the threads rather than gripping. if this happens take the top off and run a jam nut down onto the top of the nylock. a jam nut is a nut with a lower profile than a regular one. A regular nut will work too but be higher and require more dremel work in the next step. Next get your trusty dremel out and take out a bit more of the top piece to make clearance for the jam nut. If you end up reprinting because all of this dremeling somehow bothers the 3D printer in you, you could reprint with recesses for the nuts of course. Another option is a set screw in the captive nut. drill and tap a hole perpendicular to one of the nut's flat faces. insert a socket set screw in the hole that will not protrude when tightened against the shifter shaft. Then drill a corresponding hole from the side of the lower printed part to access the set screw when the knob is in the right position. It would be better to reprint the bottom with the hole designed in though because hitting the nut just right is going to be hard! Thanks for the great videos you have lots of good info and ideas.
Carbon fibre with high five blue insert would look the best. Great functional print!
You could also add a counter locking nut, another nut that tightens against the main nut keeping it in place. The you add the top over both, might require a small redesign to fit the second nut over.
When proofing pie crust you can use dry beans to weight the crust. I wonder if a bed of beans or sand would be a good buffer for heat treating HTPLA parts?
Hi, interesting results there. I liked the NylonX and Red combo. I'll be printing in NylonX this coming week. I'll be testing to see how well it will carry something from a delivery truck into a store.
Great stuff! I drove a Subaru for a long time (not the WRX). But what filament is the shiny green of that MasterSpool? It looks marvelous!
I love your videos, they are always interesting. Where do you get your slice settings?
I love the video, but I have to mention an Enginering fix. If you’d used 2 nuts, they would lock on the shaft and stay put. Thread the first on with the bottom part of the nob. The second nut then goes on and locks in place. Followed by the top of the nob, which you already hollowed out. Then the pla nob would be only decretive.
Joel, this saved you a lot of money (having to buy a new car) 😁
Bahahahaha
I've annealed regular PLA, I vacuum seal it in a bag and then I use a souse vide bath to do it at a lower temperature for an hour.
What temp would you recommend?
I did it at 60c.
seems like you could have used a jam nut to lock it down from the top after screwing the bottom in, and a metal plate/washer embedded in the top side. This would allow you to position the knob firmly how you want it too. Looks great though, and thanks for sharing!
Could you show how you made that along with putting the red letters in? Thanks!
to lock the nut I would use one of the following: Teflon tape, thread locker medium strength, two nuts and if needed soft thread locker (blue) and or a soft washer in between. I think you could even sand down the nuts to make them slimmer
So making a custom one for the MINI. Was the red WRX printed as an insert part, or did you print using multi filament material ? Like the Blue BTW
I agree with the nylock nut. I'm wondering if a dome nut would have worked. That way you know it can't go all the way through.
Hi Joel, both colours look great , I have a black car so it would be the carbon for me. As your car is blue the choice is obvious. Love the candy apple red lettering, did you use a duel extruder to make these ?
You should print the top part with some empty space inside, so that you can fit a second nut and lock it against the first before putting the top on, after placing the bottom part in the right position on the lever.
That way it won't move unless you unlock it with a wrench.
Cool you're car guy. I have a lotus 7 printed many parts from mine. Shift gate / High Level brake light
Why not carbon fiber with blue WRX insert?
Carbon fibre nylon with the candy apple red looks incredible
Joel, First a warning: I would be cautious about a CF shift knob. Those fibers may find their way into your hand! I have been thinking about that because I just got some Nylon X from Matterhackers and was thinking about replacing one of my early 3D printing projects (2 years ago?). It was a shift knob for my MX5. The original is in black ABS with acetone vapor smoothing (still in pretty good shape). I just used 100% infill and printed the threads on the inside of the knob. I did chase the treads with a tap but the imperfections in the threads keep the knob from turning much like your nylock. It turned out way better than the "Performance" replacement knob I bought.
The Nylon X parts I have printed are strong but it seems I can "feel" those little CF hairs. Maybe it's just my imagination? Perhaps an epoxy seal finish over the CF?
Jeol, that black one looks nice 🖒
Nice! How did you make the Red inset?
Instead of the nilock I would use a double nuts and the lower would be hidden by a round cache, this way you're sure it won't love at all.
The only question is how would the plastic support the pressure between the 2 nuts?
I like the black, my WRX is midnight blue
The jam nut is best. In the John Deere plant we also add Locktite prior to knob assembly. The jam nut allows you to align the knob and then tighten the jam but to lock it in that position.
Was there a video I missed on creating this knob?
As Joel says in the end, the nylon insert adds heat insulation so the PLA part will not be in direct contact with a hot metal piece. It should better survive in the long term.
I know this is an old video, but you could use a cap nut, that would give you protection from a threaded part pushing through the top.
Manual shifting FTW!!
What happened to the F1 car?
Most aftermarket shift knobs use set screws on the side (though those don't always hold well). You could have also used blue loctite on the nut thread.
If the vase had been filled with sand or some other dense material that would resist shrinking, would it have kept it’s shape?
The carbon fiber knob looked fantastic. Normally there is a second nut on the gear shift rod . You rotate the knob to position then tighten the second nut to lock the knob in position.
I think you could redesign the upper part of the shift knob to provide a pocket for the upper half of the nyloc nut.
You might find that solid infill and annealing combined give the best results for long-term strength. Obviously the print time will increase and the annealing process should be done slower but if the goal is crystallization and strength I think a solid part will give the best results.