Reverse Engineer Car Parts with CAD | Finalizing a Fiat Race Car Fender

[@braulioayala6574]

Great Work!! You're reverse Engineering videos are essential. I'm a fan!

[@LearnEverythingAboutDesign]

Awesome, thank you!

[@Printedperformance]

Excellent! I finally got a chance to sit down and watch all 3 videos. I can’t wait to sit down and try to do this on my own. I posted a link to your video on one of the Fiat groups I’m in, didn’t figure you’d mind. I’m sure it’s something some of them would be interested in. Thanks again, amazing work!

[@LearnEverythingAboutDesign]

Awesome! Thank you! Yeah spread the word :) As you get into it don't hesitate to ask questions! and you can use the file I made if you decide you want to.

[@Printedperformance]

@@LearnEverythingAboutDesign I definitely it’ll will be using your file, but I want to take a crack at it myself, I need to learn how to do this on my own haha

[@alphaboltz]

love your videos, im hooked. im going to start making some parts for myself, and i am normally fabricating my own stuff but this will add another level of knowledge. and ability to integrate 3d printing into my fabs

[@LearnEverythingAboutDesign]

Go for it! That is great to hear!

[@Printedperformance]

Also, I will say, the fender that I scanned was far from perfect, I have two of these cars and this one was from the rougher of the two. The pocket in the front is actually where there’s a hole for the bumper strut to come through. I removed the old ugly 80’s bumpers along time ago. The bottom right side of the fender, there is a lot of rust and was a big issue when scanning. The model looks amazing even with the subpar scan though.

[@LearnEverythingAboutDesign]

Ah bumper strut makes sense! All the pics i found of these being restored must have been older and maybe they didn't have that?

[@Printedperformance]

@@LearnEverythingAboutDesign yes, 1976 I believe was the first year for the bigger rubber bumper, before that it’s a nice chrome one. On mine I just completely removed it as most of the people who put air rams and splitters do.

[@kane0508LCAC]

Hi. Love your videos, they’re so helpful and informative. I’m just wondering, once you’ve created these models from the scans, how can they be used practically? Do they 3D print? What’s the ultimate aim once you’ve reverse engineered these? Maybe not for you, but for someone like myself who perhaps wants to create their own parts. Thank you!

[@LearnEverythingAboutDesign]

Thanks! So this fender was for a race car and the person making them actually built a room sized 3d printer! others machine them out of foam to make a fiberglass mold or plug. With my current scan to part series for my car I am 3d printing it in small sections which is being a massive pain honestly. I think ideally being able to machine them from foam or wood would be ideal. Smaller parts could be 3d printed with the right materials and used but full fenders or over fenders.... There is a video of a pro drifter, i think chris forsberg?, that had some 3d printed widebody fenders

[@kane0508LCAC]

@@LearnEverythingAboutDesign thanks so much for the reply! Is outsourcing the 3D printing to a company an option? Ideally I’d want to scan, reverse engineer, tweak, print then create a mould - do you think this is a good route? Again, thanks so much for your help.

[@LearnEverythingAboutDesign]

@@kane0508LCAC You could certainly outsource the 3d printing BUT it will be expensive and large thin prints would be expensive to ship. A lot of people that do this end up making or getting small CNC routers to cut foam. there is a good channel called Easy Composites that has videos on making molds from 3d prints. For me i am trying to print in pieces and get a feel for how it looks on the car, but if i was just printing a mold the parts would be more stable. So if you are 100% sure about the model and how it would fit then printing the negative as a mold is likely easier.

[@kane0508LCAC]

@@LearnEverythingAboutDesign thank you for that information, extremely helpful!!

[@gandersson6121]

Did you do anything to the scan before you started modeling? I think i saw in part 2 that it consisted mostly of squares instead of triangles. maybe you already have a video on the topic. And also what is the downside of sticking to "smoothdisplay" when moving vertices. And finally thank you for the videos, they are extremely helpfull

[@LearnEverythingAboutDesign]

The scan was sent to me. The only thing I did was rotate it a bit in Fusion so it was approximately right but I did no mesh processing. A subscriber sent it to me asking about modeling it because he was going to 3D print fenders for his race car. He built a large format 3d printer to do it. Part of the reason why this method was ok(tolerance wise) being close enough. Triangles and nGons are generally bad but can't always be avoided. If you have to have them you should try and stick them away from big changes in curvature. The 4 sided faces control the surface tangency into and out of the edges. When you have triangles, or Star points you end up with totally flat sections and/or pinches at the stars. Forms has the ability to make a "T point" which is sometimes preferable to a start point. Smooth display modeling can quickly get you into a bad spot. The second option showing the cage ALT+2 and displaying the smooth under is perfectly fine. The problem is that in smooth display you may get into a situation where the box display cage crosses/intersects itself. The goal should always be 4 sides and a somewhat even distribution of face size across the model unless you need to add some control edges.

[@gandersson6121]

@@LearnEverythingAboutDesign Cheers! that explains alot.