11-13 Replacement Radio Knob

[NewToMe2013PPV]

So you're the one that bought 2. He has 3 left.

I have 2 of those in my Ebay cart...was debating between them and the cheap $10 ones. He raised his price to $44.95 each...

[CrashTestDummy]

That's me!!

I just went out and did a trial fit of my repaired knob. Fit was perfect, but I could only test it on the tuner side. The new knob fits the volume control stem so tightly, I couldn't pull it off. The old knob has been setting in the house for a few days now after dabbing some epoxy on the reinforcement ribs I glued in last week.

Here's the extent of my. work. I epoxied the clear bit in the middle of the knob back into place. Once that set, I cut some thin styrene pieces and. epoxied them against the clear bits for reinforcement. They can only be so wide, as they sit into a bit of a groove on the radio face. The white square on the side of the knob is another strip of styrene. I tried Tamiya Extra Thin cement (basically MEK), but it really didn't adhere well to the plastic the knob is made of. When the side piece fell off, I reattached it with epoxy, and that seems to have held better. The side of the knob had a crack on it. I'm guessing one of the officers smacked it a few times with a mic, or other piece of equipment a few times, then time did its job.

repaired radio knob.JPG (137.03 KiB) Viewed 2304 times

[NewToMe2013PPV]

I'm an idiot...bought 2 radio knobs...when they came in they seemed small...went out to the car and it's one of my AC temp knobs that is broken

I guess I have spares.

Now to find the knob I need instead.

[GammaFlat]

Has anyone considered 3D printing the knobs? I have such a contraption (Bambu P1S) and would be willing to print as many as folks wanted for a reasonable price. I suspect the most expensive and annoying part would be shipping and that won't be much.

I don't have a 3D scanner (I would love to own one ). If someone can scan one and get me a file I can send through my Bambu slicer (that's geek-speak for the first step in print preparation), I can make a stab at printing a bunch.

It might be a little challenging to get an exact match on color (grey). For "rights issues", we might need to make the design a little different but that's probably pretty easy and the result would be palatable.

The actual material used (filament) would be key as it has several properties to consider including color, heat resistance, uv resistance, impact resistance and cost. Generally, the better "resistance" properties you need, the more expensive. I suspect the filament cost will be between 1.5 cents/gram (cheap PLA) and 12 cents/gram (exotic carbon fiber stuff). For reference, I suspect the knobs are well less than 10 grams. The expensive filament might sound cheap but it would need to be purchased 1Kg at a time which would be 120 bucks from the jump.

Realistically, I think starting off with super cheap filament (PLA) assuming we can develop a good 3D design would be best. We could decide to move up the filament quality (unlikely) which might require a more expensive upfront investment in filament.

Ideas or maybe most importantly a 3D scan of our knobs would be great. I'm certainly open to help out with the printing part. BTW, I think the internals of the factory knob are the reason they break so easily. The plastic becomes brittle and the "shaft grabbing part" is very thin in critical load bearing spots.... This can be avoided (I think) with a slightly modified design (no "thin" walls and lots of infill) that would make the inside much more robust no matter the material.

Some random thoughts in no particular order:

• I first thought of printing interior Caprice parts after I broke a "spear" while changing out my stereo. Before you ask, I think spears would be difficult. I think spears are too long for my printer to manage (255mmx255mm print area max which makes the diagonal about 360mm or 14.9 inches). Also, glossy surfaces might be challenging.

• I have ordered filament that should be closer than anything I have on hand. I'll post pictures of samples (for color comparison) as soon as is practical.

• We still need a 3D design.

• Anyone that wants to get in the 3D print game might consider the Elegoo Carbon for 280 bucks or one like mine (Bambu P1S) for 400. I warn you... this might be the deepest rabbit hole you ever enter. I've had my printer for several months and it kinda owns me.

[smwalker]

IPF makes some for the G8 not sure if they fit PPV. Look rough though.

https://ipfracing.com/products/g8-radio ... duct-modal

Going to go check AliExpress again.

[GammaFlat]

The quality of the IPF Racing knobs look to be extremely low quality 3D printing. I would expect we could do considerably better in quality. The color and shape would be better as well. Maybe I need a 3D scanner...