Source for Dimensions / "Blueprints"?

[marmalade]

There are a ton of little plastic parts in the E30 that I think could be 3D printed, including even some larger ones. I have a few things I want to replace, but trying to find dimensions for most parts has been difficult. Is there some source out there that might have this kind of information, or even "blueprints" (if that's the right term)?

Thanks!

[nando]

Unless you worked for BMW in the 80's I don't think you will find them. E30's were all designed by hand on paper - they didn't start using 3D modeling & CAD until the E36.

Probably you would have to measure each part and make a new model. I've been thinking it would be cool to have a repository of E30 parts that anyone could download, although I suppose they could just be uploaded to Thingverse, etc.

[Vincenze]

You can always use calipers.

A 3D model for 3D printers often has to be beefier, like every wall must be at least 1mm thick. Also, if you can't use a good 3D printer, you must add model supports.

[Northern]

There are a few clips and things on thingiverse, fewer on grabcad.

[nando]

There's a few things I'd like to make. I'll post up any files I finish. I made new terminal covers for my new Optima H6 yellow top battery for example - the ones it came with do not fit the E30 terminals at all, lol. They still need some adjustment though.

[moatilliatta]

3d scanning is probably the easiest way.

[nando]

A decent scanner is thousands of dollars though.. we actually have at least 6 of them at work, but me asking to borrow one of our $40,000 tools to laserscan some $4 E30 parts is probably not going to go smoothly, although it's crossed my mind in the past. :p

honestly, you have to modify things for 3D printing anyway (or to just improve the original part generally). Measuring the critical dimensions and building a new model designed for printing in the first place actually makes a lot of sense. maybe, someday, those $10,000 pocket scanners will be $100, and then we'll revisit this. Fortunately I have access to basically ever modeling program you can think of, so that part is "easy"..

[Vincenze]

I load images scanned by a regular scanner into Freecad using the Image Workbench and trace them.
You can select 2 points on an image, assign the dimension, and scale the image to match the real part dimension.

[nando]

yeah, I've done that as well if it's a mostly 2D part, a flange, etc. I've also tried photogrammetry to generate a point cloud, but it doesn't work very well at a small scale (and probably my setup wasn't very good). Maybe it'd work better now, the software has come a long way and of course a cell phone camera is light years better than when I tried it in like 2011-2012.

[McGyver]

Unless you worked for BMW in the 80's I don't think you will find them. E30's were all designed by hand on paper - they didn't start using 3D modeling & CAD until the E36.

Probably you would have to measure each part and make a new model. I've been thinking it would be cool to have a repository of E30 parts that anyone could download, although I suppose they could just be uploaded to Thingverse, etc.

I've got several parts that I've designed (SolidWorks) and fabricated. I'd be happy to post my work if someone made a repository.

[marmalade]

I've got several parts that I've designed (SolidWorks) and fabricated. I'd be happy to post my work if someone made a repository.

I'd definitely be interested in that. Were you thinking like Github/lab or something like that?

[TobyB]

I have found that by the time i've dicked around with
scanning/photo import/ etc that the caliper
method is far faster, more accurate, and makes a better finished print.

Because really, we're not printing dashboards,
we're printing clips to hold the OE caps into our BBS R2's
or something mostly- functional like that.

And when you're designing that way, you
get a better print when you think like the printer does.
Cameras, scanners, etc don't do that.
Trying to give a mesh some substance and
maintain dimensional accuracy is nuts.

t
...in my limited experience...