I would be very wary of 3d printed thermoplastic parts anywhere near a hot engine...

On 4/28/2026 at 8:33 PM, bushytails said:

I would be very wary of 3d printed thermoplastic parts anywhere near a hot engine...

A good, general precaution for those who don't understand the limitations of 3D printing.

I'm the Principal R&D Engineer at work (26 years) and my team prints technical FDM parts literally all day long. I'm using ASA on this project and after a month of driving around in the Phoenix heat, I see no signs of distortion or warping on my TPS adapter. I have made allowances to install two small aluminum compression stop ferrules if needed but so far, I see no signs of heat deflection being an issue.

I could also switch to using PA6-CF filament if I needed but it is more difficult to print and 3 times the cost of ASA. Here is a pic of some PA6-CF air filter adapters I designed and sell to the Corvair crowd. These survive much higher under-hood temperatures than you would ever see around the intakes of our water pumpers. Corvair engines often see 400F head temps and 250-260F oil temps and the heat soak when those engines shut down is pretty severe.

Edited 1 hour ago1 hr by azdave