3d printed c4.1 gearbox
 

Something I've been asked to test things are going really well over an hours run time and no problems so far.

http://s18.postimg.org/rwxrpried/image.jpg

http://s10.postimg.org/7jmw4vrz9/image.jpg

http://s10.postimg.org/ch0gpztyd/image.jpg

Ash

strength?
cost?
fitment for bearings nice and snug?

Cost to be confirmed

Fitting of bearings is really good and idler shafts are nice and tight. The material around the idler shafts has been beefed up. This is only proto 1 I've changed a few little bits for the second one.

As for strength I couldn't snap one in my hand no matter how hard I tried. Ide say easily as strong as the original if not stronger.

Ash

You need to try it in warm weather with the motor getting hot, as i found with the 3D printed gearbox on the S2 Evo, is that you get heat soak from the motorplate which travels along the gearbox bolts, and softens the plastic which cause's the idler gear shafts to move then strip the gears.

If your using ABS rather than PLA this should be a bit less of a problem as it has a high softening point.

It is some sort of ABS I've been told the material is used in high temperature applications in electrical equipment.

Ash

Interesting...

What does this printed design add to the car?

You can't buy the original machined gearbox anymore and I know of 4 people who have had the original gearbox fail on them around the idler gears and they have had to buy new cars as the gearbox is unavailable. So someone said they could 3d print it so here we are.

Ash

More of a reason to buy a c4.2 :D

More of a reason to buy a proper manufacturer car I would have thought..
Not very good practice by Centro if parts are no longer available...! Why buy a C4.2 if it's parts are not available 12 months down the line.. , :thumbdown:

The 4.1 was made from machined material, which is a 'proper' manufacturing technique. But...as a relatively low volume technique it would have been expensive to make, and only made in small numbers. Not ideal maybe, but it was a means to an end for a company setting up doing a conversion kit to test the water with. They all have to start somewhere! ;)

Now they have a proven platform, they have invested more heavily and the 4.2 gearbox is moulded...so could be made by the thousand...you 'should' be able to get the 4.2 spares for a long time to come!

Welcome to the real world of product development, that is all!

That being said it is very poor of cml to stop supporting the c4.1.

I'm surprised to hear they have stopped 4.1 support already...I agree that's not great!

Maybe there is just not enough demand for those parts?

Since they are machined though...you'd think they could make a couple! Might cost a bit...but at least they'd be keeping people running :eh?:

I would welcome somebody correcting me, as I personally have a C4.1 which is now good for nothing.

Would a C4.2 gearbox fit C4.1?

I happen to know how much a gearbox like the c4.1 costs to produce and unless cml were getting incredible discount then they were loosing about £10 on every one they sold. So to only have say five produced would cost nearly as much as buying a c4.2 kit. This is the only reason why they probably won't have any more gearboxes made! This leaves you with 3 choices.
1, obtain a 3d printed box with the hope it performs.
2 , spend aprox £100 on getting 1 box produced by the original machinist. (I can get the details of where they were produced if needed)
3, spend the £135 and get the new improved model with a better chassis and a gearbox that will last much longer and only cost £6 to replace!!

Steve, I appreciate your simplistic view of the 3 options for anyone who has a gearbox failure on a C4.1, in addition I also fully understand economic decisions which businesses take on a daily basis.

I will start by saying I am not anti-cml, i have always run Team Associated products ranging from the RC10GT & B2, all the way up to the latest B44.2.

We could discuss the pro's and con's for machining parts vs moulding parts but I believe this is off the initial topic. This decision is in general made around volume projections and the impact on the P&L account.

The issue which I see is that in 2013 the C4.1 was one of the most popular cars on the club, regional and national scene. The reason being, it's simply an excellent car. With that being said, if a company stops making parts for a very popular and current car, mid season I believe they are leaving themselves wide open for widespread criticism.

You may think this a tactic which has been used to increase sales on the C4.2? Anyway my previous comment is pure speculation. I would however welcome an explanation from cml.

So - I'll ask again. Will the c4.2 gearbox fit the c4.1?

I don't think it will.

Just looked. On centrorc.com they have got the c4.1 gearboxes in stock!
Again still off topic I'm afraid! Sorry.

No :eh?::lol:

No no no noooooooooo :bored:

just talking to a club member today about this, he has a 4.1 needs a new gearbox housing, not had the car long as he bought it second hand, has now found he may as well throw it in the hedge, I think the "no problem, you just need to spent £135ish on a new car" is discusting! Glad I have a vega, told him to do the same least they know how to make a good conversion:p

I fully understand R&D is hard for a small company, dumping customers like this is not good

And to point out that once you have thrown your old car in the hedge, rushed out and bought the new one from the company that just shafted you, you can then buy the new part for the new car for 6 quid, so you just threw the old car away for what is now a 6quid part..........well it's very luck all us club racers have money to burn eh?

Run it again today no problem's at all!

Ash

Well I'm behind you Ash and I think there's an awful lot of Centro owners who will be too. Good on you for having a crack at it.

So when's the first production run?

Ash,

Like Jonathan said we had massive problems getting it to last, testing it round Oswestry in autumn is no good, you need to test at big high grip track on a hot day with a fast motor. We could only get it to last for 3/4min before the lay shaft moved.

Good luck though and I hope you get it working.

Tony

If you've got data for doing 3D printing why not get a quote for machining it too? The design might need adjusting slightly to make it easier to machine, but that wouldn't take much.

Machining it from solid will always give you a better part. Better material options and better strength/robustness.

3D printing will not currently compete with proper machined parts mechanically.

Just a thought ;)

I have a feeling people might not be wanting to pay £50 plus for a gearbox ?. Thats how much they would be in acetal which is what i made the proto c4.1 gearbox's out of.

3D printing is a cheaper option and a lot less labour intensive, but its making them durable which is the hard part. If they can last a meeting on a hot summers day then thats progress :thumbsup:

That was really my point...;)

Personally, as I work with these types of processes every day with my work, I'd still be very wary of something that structural being made from 3D printing. It might work for less mechanically critical parts, or for short term testing, but not that gearbox in a long term robustness way anyway...as you found yourself!

3D printing will be great one day..and is improving all the time...but currently it is still really only a prototyping (or ornament making) process for most things...and that goes for the bigger industrial printing machines as well...not just the small desktop types.

Just understand the material and process before making promises to potential customers. CML might have got it wrong by not supporting the c4.1 any more, but you could also get it wrong promising people fully working gearboxes made that way ;)

I look forward to being proved wrong though...it'd be a sign of 3D printing actually being that good already, and injection moulding companies needing to start worrying!

additative manufacturing is the capable of making a gear box, but with all this type of process an amount of machining is required, and non of those systems are quick enough.
A quick CNC is an option for metal parts, but numbers is the decider and unit cost.
check this link as it can laser weld titanium to gold powder in to any shape you can design
http://www.renishaw.com/en/additive-...cturing--15239

basically what it comes down to is exactly that. Money and Cost.

When the gearbox was available as a spare it retailed at £39.99 which in all fairness is a lot of money. Compare that to the C4.2's gearbox which retails at £6.99 and you get the point.

CML didn't discontinue the gearbox for the fun of it. They can't actually get anymore made without ordering a large quantity which isn't feasible to do.

I'm sure I saw an Ali C4.1 gearbox on the petit Rc site, I think Red Workshop made it

Not sure if it went into production or not?

I totally agree, it comes down to the financial impact.

A replacement gearbox was £39.99, however a new conversion is approx £135, irrespective of the new gearbox being £6.99.

I also didn't throw my C4 in the bin for the fun of it, I did that because I was left with no other option by cml.

It's still in the very early stages of testing nothing will be released or promised without extensive testing this thread was just to show an experiment a group of enthusiasts where trying. It has run for another 25 minutes none stop last night. No problems to report.

Ash

If someone can send me the drawings or one to draw up I'd like to have a go at making some.

What printer did you use to print this?

Out of interest what's the most common cause of the "failure" of the original diff housing?

Is it where the screws for the rear shock tower strip?

I don't mind making them out of alloy. But as said previously in this thread they won't be cheap, around £60 - £70 per box for say a small batch of 10 supplied un-anodised.

Just to keep you all posted on this issue of the C4.1 gearbox we are in negotiations with the manufacturer of said gearbox and trying to get the minimum order quantity down to a more manageable amount without the gear box costing the earth to supply.
As soon as I have some information I will post it up here or alternatively if you wish to drop me an e-mail I will respond directly.
my e-mail is [email protected]

:thumbsup:

I have tried to buy one of these... ordered it, went to checkout, paid for it (as I thought), then the order was cancelled... so there were none then (about 2 weeks ago) and are not making any more