Project Hellcat: Custom 3D-Printed Speaker Covers

Airwolf 3D Intern Prescott Campbell has been busy helping the rest of the Wolfpack design and print custom parts for the company’s project car, the Dodge SRT Hellcat Challenger. Check out how he accomplished his latest project, re-designed speaker covers customized with the “AW3D” logo.

The stock speaker cover in the SRT Hellcat Challenger works well and matches the black of the interior, but I thought I could make one that stood out, matched the black and red theme of the car, and sported Airwolf 3D’s “AW3D” logo.

I started by designing the back of the speaker cover to be the same as the stock part. This way, the new speaker cover could fit in the car as if it was from the factory.

This involved making a wave-like feature around the back of the cover. This was on the stock part so the back of the cover would be flush with the curvature of the interior panel it sat on. This turned out to be the most difficult part of the design.

Once I was done re-creating the back features, I started making the part custom. I wanted to change the shapes of the perforations in the cover to hexagons instead of circles. This would go better with the angular shape of the AW3D logo that I would add to the part later. Once I was happy with my pattern, I cut it onto the top surface of the part.

The next step was to put the AW3D logo on the part. I found a high-resolution photo of the logo on the internet and imported it into Solidworks. I traced the picture to get a sketch of the logo which I could then use to make the logo a solid body. I made it so the logo would “extrude” from the bottom of the mesh and rise past the top surface of the mesh so it would be legible. This is how the final design came out:

I loaded the part into APEX. I used the standard ABS with HydroFill settings provided in APEX for this print. At first, I oriented the cover so the mesh and logo would be facing up and would not have any support on top of them. I printed the part and realized that no support material was generated under the mesh in the .GCODE file. With the help of Airwolf Engineers Polo Delgado and Rahul Devikar, we were able to get HydroFill to generate. The solution was setting the part at a 45 degree angle from the print bed.

The printed speaker cover came out beautifully!

Next, we mirrored the part for the other side and printed it. To install these covers, we had to remove the clips from the back of the stock speaker covers. We put them on the printed parts and installed them in the car.

As you can see, it’s easy to create quick custom parts for your car. I’m working on even more custom parts for Airwolf 3D’s Hellcat, so stay tuned!

ABOUT PRESCOTT

Airwolf 3D Summer Intern Prescott Campbell is a junior at Corona Del Mar High School in Newport Beach, CA. With his passion for cars and experience using Airwolf 3D printers on his school’s robotics team, Prescott joined the Wolfpack to help work on custom 3D-printed parts for the Dodge SRT Hellcat Challenger.

The 3D-Printed Speaker Covers are part of The 3D-Printed Hellcat Project. Learn more about the Wolfpack’s favorite project car and all of our 3D-printed car parts.

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This is a one-page informational sheet for automotive 3d printing.  Read this for a quick overview of 3d printing in the automotive sector.