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My updates are few but that does not mean I have not been working hard on this project. I had a setback when I gave up on the concept of fabric over frame. The first time I tried to wrap a fender I realized I could not get the shape I wanted without tailoring the fabric with all sorts of darts. This would require tailoring skills I don’t have. The darts might be ugly also.The whole point of my approach is that I wanted to remove the need to develop skills like using an English Wheel while still getting the complex shapes I wanted.

So I decided to just sandwich the 3d printed panels between two layers of fiberglass cloth. I did part of one fender as can be seen in the pictures below and a test piece showed that the resulting sandwiched composite was strong enough. I am showing the space frame of the structure because I think it looks cool and is unique. But I could have put that on the inside and made is smooth. The rough shape of the whole car is shown below as well but without the space frame of the body panels showing.

Each of the fenders shown below was made of 10 3d prints, printed on a Creality SR10-S with a 500x500x500 mm work area using a .8mm nozzle in the extruder. The space frame, in the inside is only 3mm thick and the hex pattern is about 1.5mm. The purpose of the hex pattern is to support the fiberglass as it spans the openings in the space frame. Each fender takes about 78 hours to print and uses 2.3 kilos of filament (about $46). I have not calculated the cost of fiberglass but I’m using inexpensive polystyrene resin.

The advantage of this method is that I also have a 20 x 15 mm frame around each fender and a thick structure going down the middle. When this is sandwiched in fiberglass is it quite rigid — not floppy as when you fiberglass over a foam form and then cut away all the foam.

Note that one of the pieces of each fender is missing — the headlight. I have left this for later because have to mount the fenders and see how I am going to aim the headlight. So each fender will really be 11 pieces.

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