Shep I can send you the peg...as long as you are willing to send it back with a copy. I sent you a private message get back to me if you are interested.
Location: Clewiston, FL
Posts: 93
My VIN: 3349
Club(s): (SCDC) (DCUK)
Shep I can send you the peg...as long as you are willing to send it back with a copy. I sent you a private message get back to me if you are interested.
Location: Middleburg Heights, OH
Posts: 1,939
Thanks for the reminder! I started to write up a response and literally got lost somewhere between my father-in-law painting our living room and running around town for supply runs. Still have it, but it was rambling and long and I was in between shortening it and distractions, so I will make this an open offer this time. Which is... still... long... (sorry, had a few points to address, so paragraphing each point to hopefully help readability/skippability!)
I moved into a new house end of February, so things are still very much a mess inside, and my 3D printers are offline until the "tech room" they're going into can be eradicated fully of mold. There's drywall that needs to be replaced before I will move anything into there, to absolutely minimize the effects of what gets airborne and spreads. In other words, I can't 3D print new ones yet. That said!!!
I am more than able to design new ones, even remotely if someone already has a peg and a set of digital calipers. Then, once I get my 3D printers up and running, I can 3D print off a few test pieces, and if they measure up right and people report successful fitments, I can print off probably a few hundred in one go if I felt like it and just keep sending them out to people as need be. I know Maritime-elf mentioned it being a good money maker, but, I've got slightly bigger fish to fry, so this will remain free, open source, and heck I can see about making "take - free" boxes (what do you call those?) available for DCS events maybe? Long-term thinking out loud.
Someone who has their mirrors apart remind me of the peg's function real quick: does that metal strip serve to add pressure that keeps the peg inside the black socket? I'm thinking similar to a leaf suspension at the moment.
As for dimensions, DMC was pretty bad at mixing imperial and metric in finalized designs for no rhyme or reason. Side markers for example are imperial and I've blueprinted down to minimum 1/4" increments, while the taillights are metric and I've blueprinted down to minimum 5 mm increments. I would not be surprised if this turns out to be a series of tiny imperial fractions, but I hope it's metric, for all of our sakes. You can usually move the calipers to visually check if a nice, more round number works still. If it does, it's probably spot-on.
I drew a mock-up of the peg in LibreCAD and put letters for the dimensions I would need. Can someone with digital calipers and a peg handy get me dimensions for the following?
- - - -
A - Overall height of peg
B - Overall square width of peg
C - Height from bottom of peg to top of square section
D - Diameter of ball (might match B)
- - - -
E - Overall width of peg including metal tabs
F - Height of metal tabs at insert points to peg
G - Width of metal tabs
- - - -
At that point I should be able to 3D print a whole bunch when my 3D printers are back online, and also when I acquire the new filament I will be using, but the color alone will make it easy to identify (new ones will assuredly not be red, likely monochrome). I have a lead to really good filament for the application (M3D), but I need to figure out how much "give" the material has, which might be sufficient to install without any metal tabs at all if I design it correctly.
But aside from all that, I can at least model an exact replica and Thingiverse an STL file also (here's my current designs on there), so anyone with their own 3D printer can get one printed and test it. But I need to be blunt: probably 98% of the guys I've dealt with on the 3D printing community think it's normal for a 3D printer to not be fully dimensionally accurate, so just a fair warning that if it doesn't fit and someone else prints it, that doesn't inherently mean the design is bad, it could be as simple as configuration or capabilities of the printer too.
Posts: 4,807
My VIN: 3937
Bump.Originally Posted by Jonathan
Still trying to determine which mirror assembly part number goes with which side. 110418 and 110419 are the numbers, but when you look at the photos for each of these, it sure does look like they got them backwards. I am considering buying a replacement for the driver's side of my car, but don't want to find out the hard way that I got the wrong side when it shows up at my front door.
Sept. 81, auto, black interior
Location: Poland
Posts: 125
My VIN: 3771
My 3D models of pegs attached (STEP203). One is a copy of original design, second one has an integrated spring. Enjoy.
mirror_guide-straight.jpgmirror_guide-straight_w_spring.jpgside_mirror_guide_pin.zip
--
Rhye
Location: Middleburg Heights, OH
Posts: 1,939
Whaaaaaat. That's bonkers, surely they've sold a few of these over the years?! How has no one noticed yet? 110418.jpg shows 110419 and vice versa even.
I'd call Houston up and ask what's going on, that's one they need to fix on their end. I know DMCH James doesn't visit the forums frequently at least (he took a month or two to cross 559 off the fuel pump recall list via PM), but that's just weird.
Side note: I kinda wish these forums had the XDA-Developers feature where you could @Shep and I'd get a notification that somebody "mentioned" me. That would come in great handy for bringing someone's attention to a thread they didn't know was relevant to them (I just lucked upon this one).
Wow, that's actually really good! Damn, I was going to OpenSCAD the thing but that works just as well. (On my todo list: learning FreeCAD). Asking rather than assuming: are those free to use?
I still don't like that spring design in general, it's just prone to coming out if the pressure is suddenly removed (ask me how I know). But I can't think of a better way to do it. I've even thought about a way to incorporate "cross lock tweezers" (see pic below) but on that small of a scale, the springs snapping could arguably be worse. I'm just not sure yet, but would definitely prefer a 3D printed way to tackle that approach. That said, thanks to Thomas Sanladerer's latest YouTube upload (about making a phone mount for his car), I've learned of a new material that would be a perfect fit for automotive use: PC-ABS. This is what I'll be testing on my projects, personal and professional, and will hopefully become the dominating material in my stockpile.
il_570xN.351484990[1].jpg
Fun fact: 3D printed ABS has pitfalls vs. its' injection-molded counterparts that mean the 3D printed stuff degrades in car environments. Dash cam mounts for example, while being great, might see some softening and changing of the print itself after a few years. Injection molded ABS however doesn't change in those same environments. Reason being: injection molded is 100% solid, while 3D printed stuff has gaps. Layer adhesion is a giant issue with ABS that requires enclosures and heat etc. to tackle, and those air gaps expand over time in 3D printed objects subjected to such heat. Reading the datasheet I found on PC-ABS, it seems to expand the temperature range beyond ABS enough that it will still hold up well in car environments. Whether or not that is fully accurate however remains to be seen, but given the hottest part this guy will encounter is a heatsunk mirror at best, I don't expect it to encounter many issues. Not like an interior part would anyhow. Our cars are literally built in insulating material by default (fiberglass) and are giant ovens when set out in direct sunlight for several hours.
Location: Poland
Posts: 125
My VIN: 3771
Sure - free to use by anybody.
The spring is not a separate part. It just extends from the peg's main body - see cross section:
mirror_guide-straight_w_spring_cs.jpg
Some experiments may be required to find the proper thickness of that "leaf spring" feature (it's around 0.9mm now). And I'd suggest to use some low-friction material (like nylon or something similar) - although I'm not an expert in plastics / 3D printing.
Location: Middleburg Heights, OH
Posts: 1,939
OEM had two parts, sorry, should have phrased that more clearly. I replaced mine with a set from Tom N from Poland (deloreana.com) and one of the springs came out rather easily. Stopped progress for like two hours as I was on hands and knees finding it. Ideally, it would be embedded in the manufacturing process, or designed in a way where sudden tension changes wouldn't cause a release from the peg.
I could technically dual extruder it, man though that would get tricky. I've also heard horror stories of nylon combined with angelic praise of it, seems to be a 50-50 mix of love and hate for it. It's a material that I currently have not tried and don't know the properties of offhand, but do want to experiment with. I have flexibles that are in the "untested for now" category as well, however I am mostly saving those for grips and tires and such. One of my many projects down the road.
What my current curiosity is: a simple () shape, two arcs that meet at their endpoints to form a continuous loop. This would print rather well quite honestly, and if the cavity in the peg is shaped appropriately enough, there would be enough room for the shape to flatten and expand along the peg's length, while the material itself would resist this by nature. This might be a strange concept however as I do not know if nylon would handle the temperature range well without deforming, which would be absolutely critical in a tensioned print.
Location: Clewiston, FL
Posts: 93
My VIN: 3349
Club(s): (SCDC) (DCUK)
Shep, this might sound odd, but only one of my pegs has the metal spring part. I am not sure they are required. or it could be that the factory just didn't care and stuck whatever into it. I hope your experimentation is going ok. If you still need a peg I can send you one of mine.
Location: Middleburg Heights, OH
Posts: 1,939
No need for a physical peg now that I have the actual CAD model to reference based off of said peg. I really only needed it to reverse engineer the part, which was done by Rhye.
Experimentation hasn't started yet, to be honest I had spent 3-4 days of setup, 1 day of filming, and 2-3 days of editing (learning curve mostly) to create a video not relevant to this thread (I'll post it soon), all while waiting for my order of color-changing silica gel to arrive. Just got it an hour ago, so now I can make that long-overdue filament dry box I've desperately needed to get higher-quality prints. Need to dry out my PLA first on this one.
I should also note that I want to try a single-extruder setup for this guy first. My printer does fantastic with one extruder, it has quite a few hiccups with two, so I don't want to tempt fate. This might prove difficult however, I have no idea how it will handle quite honestly, but that means it will be one material rather than two. My biggest concern is removal of the support structure. It needs to be clean enough to not cause problems, which might be easier said than done.
Location: Poland
Posts: 125
My VIN: 3771
Two sets of my pegs have just arrived. FDM printed red ABS. Two of a new design with plastic spring, two of original design. Original part (rightmost one) for comparison.
pegs_all.jpg
I sanded slightly all contact surfaces, installed original springs and made some tests. Here are my conclusions:
1. Attaching points for the spring (little pits) are slightly tighter inside than in original part, obviously due to 3D printing accuracy limitations. As a result, spring has a bit less space to move freely, so the pressing force is higher. This results in increased sliding force. It shouldn't have however any negative impact on mirror pad behaviour (at least in my opinion) - actuators will handle this with no problem (checked). Good thing about it is that spring is less prone to falling away once pressed into the pits. But if one wants the spring to work exactly as intended originally, I'd recommend increasing the size of pits by ~0.1mm .
2. Pressing force of the all-plastic design peg's spring is way higher than original. Actuator can still handle this, however, unacceptable cracks appeared on the spring - see picture:
pegs_plastic_spring.jpg
The spring element would probably break and fall away very soon. I think that decreasing the height of the spring feature by around 0.3mm and increasing the cross section in most loaded areas would help here. If not, more elastic material should be considered.
3. After slightly sanding the peg's ball surface, it became a bit loose in pad's sockets (to my surprise: only in all-plastic pegs - I've checked the models and found no mistake). I'd recommend increasing the diameter of the ball slightly (by ~0.1-0.2mm) to compensate for surface finishing.
I'll probably finish my peg research here - I have to move to my other projects. Hope that my input was somewhat helpful. Shep, please continue with your ideas and find the perfect solution. (: If anybody is interested, I can offer one set of original design prototype pegs for further tests - I've equipped them with hand-made metal springs:
pegs_metal_spring.jpg
The price would be just a cost of 3D printing and shipping to US (delivery time ~2 weeks) which makes 9$ for a set. But please be aware that they're just prototype parts - I can't guarantee they'll last as long as originals.
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