3D Printed TPU Gaskets? -- Follow Up one year later
3D Printed TPU Gaskets? -- Follow Up one year later
And it's been a year since this video! So that makes 2 years on the gaskets. I wonder how they're doing.
Answer: they're holding up just fine
Ty
I love me some 3D printing, but if you need a fast gasket I would buy a roll of gasket material and cut it to size. Most auto parts stores stock a variety of materials for this use.
Gasket mating surfaces can be... extremely fickle, especially when one of the two sides is stamped sheet metal or even plastic. Too little torque on the fasteners means there won't be enough clamping force, which means leaking. Too much torque on the fasteners will dimple the stamped or plastic part, which means leaking.
If you're using this in a low temperature application with beefy mating surfaces, TPU could work fine I guess. It still seems like more effort to get a dimensionall accurate enough design than to grab a roll of gasket material and an exact blade.
I think this can be applied to 70% of 3D printing. But sometimes it's just fun to make the machine go brrrrrrr.
I do this on my Xtool M1 with both the blade and laser cutter, both seem to work fantastic though the laser cutter leaves a little burnt residue.
Super easy to come up with the trace, just throw your part on a flatbed scanner, scan and trace it out in FreeCAD and send the SVG out for it to cut.
BBK actually doesn't make a 61mm gasket (I believe for 3502 part number), it still has 58mm holes so you're really better off just going custom when it's $20 for the wrong gasket lol that you have to hack up anyways.
I love the reduced time to get things with this approach. I just keep enough of different types of FelPro gasket paper on hand and have them cut as needed, way faster than Amazon!
My friend has been running a Nylon IAC spacer ln his turbo 351W foxbody with two laser cut gaskets to go with it for over a year with hard racing in high temps and all of it has held up great.
There are plenty of gasketed surfaces out there that paper gaskets are unsuitable for these days. And I've cut my share of paper ones over the years.
I made a fuel pump gasket for a Kawasaki Vulcan about three years ago and that bike is still on the road and leak free, so there's an endorsement for you.
Yes, TPU is impervious to gasoline. It's not impervious to heat, though, so it's no good for valve cover gaskets, head side intake gaskets, or various other engine-adjacent applications.
That's awesome. I have a few rolls of TPU sitting around. I'll try to keep this in mind if I ever need something similar
While it's not a universal solution, (you do need to be 5% smarter than the machine you are fixing), it's a good option to have for those of us in the middle of nowhere and often having a need to fix something now to get it working and not need to wait for 2 weeks from now. I do keep a roll of 95A TPU for other items.
I do have a possible use for such a solution. But I will need to remove to roof off of my JD tractor to get at one of the blower motors. It should be an excellent replacement for the open foam gasket that cost $30US from JD.