My FX-R Projector Retrofit Thread

[dinanm3atl]

Very nice work!

[bmwman91]

As a Mech E. myself, I get where you are coming from. However, I merely asked in an effort to save myself from the modeling time.

Yeah, sorry man. I never wanted to be "that guy" that withheld anything from the car community, but now that I've been working in industry for a while, I am seriously starting to look at ways to get out of the rat race and take more direct control of my life / income. If I decide to make this a product, I'll make sure that it's the best deal possible for other enthusiasts. If not, then maybe I'll put all of my work out for public use.

You might want to double check that. That was true a year ago, now, it is possible/doable to print anything that can be injection molded. Even Nylon. And Peek. But that's not the point.

Love your work - sign me up for a adapter, or modifying housing for FX-R's.

Absolutely. The SLS process in particular allows an insane variety of materials to be printed, including metals. The issue with those is cost right now (and of course that will change as the technology proliferates). The adapters shown above in this thread are SLS printed nylon, but I wouldn't trust it to survive the heat of 35-55W Xenon bulbs (then add in the heat under the hood, and operating in much of the southwest US). Per the fab house, they can only guarantee material integrity up to 80°C with the nylon. They do have other stuff that can take higher heat, but the cost for a pair of housings would be on the order of $600 for a pair, not including the FX-R projectors or replacement lenses. For now, it's a better deal to buy used housings and have me mod them.

Much of the injection molded stuff found in our cars (under the hood) is glass-reinforced PBT blends. I'll keep an eye out for places that can print PBT...not much out there now, but it looks like it's on the way.

Anyway, in a year or two I will be buying a 3D printer of my own. I seem to recall that you bought one, right? It's very exciting right now as new companies pop up and they are all vying for market share. My assumption is that a big player like HP, Canon or someone like that will take note and then hit the market with something incredible. If I had to guess, I'd bet that they are working on it right now. When that happens, I expect 3D printing to really take off, prices to drop and capabilities to increase. Just my guess anyway.

[george graves]

Some have suggested 3D printing a whole new housing with the adapter built-in, but there is simply no way that current 3D printed materials can handle the temperatures and chemicals in an engine environment.

You might want to double check that. That was true a year ago, now, it is possible/doable to print anything that can be injection molded. Even Nylon. And Peek. But that's not the point.

Love your work - sign me up for a adapter, or modifying housing for FX-R's.

[Neil1138]

As a Mech E. myself, I get where you are coming from. However, I merely asked in an effort to save myself from the modeling time.

[DER E30]

definitely interested in sending my housings for modification.

x2!

[jrobie79]

Definitely interested in sending my housings for modification.

[bmwman91]

Not 100% sure about posting models right now. I invented the M42 COP conversion back in 2006 and open-sourced everything, and it turns out that I could have made a good sum of money if I had been at a different phase in life and started having them produced. Now a dozen companies make and sell them.

Since there's a lot of interest in this, I am thinking about how to make it into a product. The real difficulty here is in modifying the headlight housings. It is NOT something that someone can just do with a Dremel since the clearances between the new projector and the glass lens are ~1mm. I might end up building a jig and having people send me their housings for modification. Some have suggested 3D printing a whole new housing with the adapter built-in, but there is simply no way that current 3D printed materials can handle the temperatures and chemicals in an engine environment. While there are printable metals available, the cost is very prohibitive at the moment and I am unsure of their durability.

[AwakenNoMore]

Subscribing.

[Neil1138]

Willing to post the step/iges or any parasolid file of the adapters?

[DER E30]

WOW... Those printed prototypes look sweet!
Group buy?????????????????????????????

[marines2060]

id like to see the results of your concept, i started with retrofiting the mini moto h1 projectors then just upgraded to the 6.0 h1's, i used these instead of the frx projectors because i thought its be way to difficult to fit. The minis fit inside the back cover and i just used a dremel and plastic welding to come up with something to be sealed and sturdy.

Id love to have a set of frx's in my car though, something with ds2 bulbs for a bright output. Keep up the good work, ill be watching this.

[mutty]

Good work.

[bmwman91]

Finally, some progress pics. Round two of SLS prototypes has worked out well, and I am ready to get these suckers made up in metal. The fit is nearly perfect. At this point, inconsistencies in the castings of the FX-R projectors cause more variance in things than the adapters, so it's time to call it "good enough".

One big item I wanted to make sure of was the clearance between the projector lens and the headlight cover. To do this, I used some painter's putty since it doesn't contain abrasives.
*squish*


The thinnest part is 1.5mm, which is what was predicted from my measurements of the parts.


There is also 0.5-1.0mm of clearance between the lens retainer ring and the decorative chrome "smiley" cover. It is a bit warped, probably from decades of heat cycling, so it may take a little tweaking when I glue everything into place eventually.


Here is the projector attached to the 2nd generation SLS (3D print) prototype.


"Inside" of the adapter.


"Outside" of the adapter.


But bmwman, isn't that thing like, overly complex? What's with all the intricate nonsense? Well, it so happens that the price the 3D print house charges is directly proportional to the actual volume of the part. So, I modeled my adapter and then cored the hell out of it. They say that they can do a minimum wall thickness of 0.7mm, so I went with 1.4mm since you just aren't going to get consistent 3D print results when you are riding the limits. Warp, sag and undesired holes become issues when you push the wall thickness limit.
A solid one would have cost $37, and these were $23. Not bad for an extra 20 minutes of work.


These SLS parts are super strong. I didn't have an M4x0.7 tap handy, so I just drove the machine screws right into it. The part took the threads fine without splitting or anything. They are flexible and strong (surprisingly so). The material is nylon (sintered powder).

My next steps are to make a couple of final tweaks and then proceed to make (or maybe have a fab shop do it) the aluminum adapters. From there, I will be buying new bucket adjuster screws since the ones on these were shot, and then assembling + aiming the projectors. Since they are NOT sealed, I will be looking at my clearances in the headlight brackets and seeing about developing rubber boots to keep water and dust out of them. Worst case, I just use some aluminum tape to close things up, but I think that I can come up with something more OEM looking. I'll post up a concept / cartoon of what I am thinking of in a day or so.

[bmwman91]

Initial test-fits with the first set of 3D prints went well. My foam-core and X-Acto knife skills got me within 1mm in basically every dimension. Now that I can hard-mount the FX-R projectors to the buckets and put them into the headlight brackets, I am re-thinking a couple of things. The outside diameter of the bracket needs to shrink to ensure that things fit properly in the brackets, and they need to shrink even more if I am going to make a cast silicone weather boot thingy. The option of just using some aluminum tape to seal the openings is still on the table, and it might allow for better heat dissipation from the projector body. If I made a big silicone rubber boot, I would need to integrate vent holes to ensure that there was a little air flow while still preventing water and dust from going in. Thankfully, if I do go that route, I can get 3D prints pretty cheap, and I can make a mold from one of them.

I have a second revision of the parts ordered from the 3D printer and should have them next week. I will take and post some pics then.

[bmwman91]

Nice! I was not aware that there were readily available CVD services out there.