Designing Custom Components for Classic Cars and Hot Rods in Autodesk Fusion 360

ANNE PAULEY: Hi, everyone. My name is Anne. And welcome to my session at Autodesk University 2023. This is designing components for classic cars and hot rods in Fusion 360. Today we'll be talking about integrating 3D scan meshes into Fusion 360, design workflows, freeform modeling, and fabricating components using additive manufacturing.

Some background on me, my name is Anne Pauley. I'm a mechanical engineer. I worked on the Girl Gang Garage Iron Maven build, as well as worked for several top automotive companies on design and engineering work.

Currently I'm a technical program manager at Google on the Pixel program. And I work on design for manufacturing and operations. My interest in added manufacturing really started early on in college. I started with open source 3D printing and then moved on into the industry and worked in industrial 3D printing.

So a little bit of background on this build and the group that did it. We'll be talking, really, about a lot of the different components on the Girl Gang Garage Iron Maven build. So Girl Gang Garage is an organization based in Phoenix, Arizona started by Bogi Lateiner. So Bogi has been in the automotive industry for a long, long time. And like many women in the automotive industry, found that there weren't a lot of people that looked like her. And a lot of the people that really wanted to get into the industry had a hard time finding a sense of belonging and really a place where they can learn or start from scratch.

So this build is the third of the major classic car restorations that Girl Gang Garage has completed. This is really an ambitious build. So the 1961 Volvo PV544 was taken off of a farm outside of Phoenix, Arizona.

And the reason that this car was chosen and is so unique is it has that really, really classic '40s styling. It has lots of curved surfaces. And it's just a really unique build.

So we wanted something that would stand out from the crowd and really, really showcase both this unique car as well as this really unique group. So on top of the 1961 body being extremely unique, the entire build is extremely unique. So the classic car body was combined with the chassis drivetrain and electronics from a 2019 Volvo S60 hybrid electric vehicle.

So these are two completely different vehicles. They are not the same size. They are not the same vintage. Everything about them is different. But this build managed to combine them both into a completely custom, unique build. So basically, if you think about squeezing everything from a new Volvo, a much bigger vehicle into a classic Volkswagen Beetle, that's basically what this build did.

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- There's this connection and this magic that happens when women walk through these doors. We've always been a really big believer here that if you can dream it, you can build it. You can make it.

- Girl Gang Garage is a teaching and learning space. We are focused on changing perceptions in terms of allowing more females into the automotive space and acknowledging the women who are already working within that space.

- Girl Gang Garage came around kind of organically. It really started out originally as my desire to connect with other women in the industry and to push my skill set and learn new things. We're, like, less than 2.5% of the industry. But there are tons of amazing women out there. So I wanted to create a project that would bring a bunch of women together and create opportunities for more women to explore the trade.

- First all-female build was what we call the Chevy montage. And it involved about 90 women from all across the country, about 23 different states. And they ranged in experience level from 20, 30 years of experience to I don't know what a ratchet is.

- There were a ton of gaps. So immediately we were thinking about how are we going to do any of these things. Obviously, 3D printing is a good technology to use. So I was, like, that may be a good opportunity for us. But the skills gap is always the CAD software. That's the limiter, right?

- Autodesk is tackling that by creating tools like Fusion 360, which is making the world of additive manufacturing and CAD design accessible and removing those barriers of entry.

- How do we unblock things for people? How do we help them move faster, learn faster? Part of the thing that sets Girl Gang Garage apart from so many other amazing organizations out there is that they're not only building skills in their local community here in Phoenix, but they're building skills nationally.

- Once this showed up, I'm, like, yes, I'm in. I'm in. Because I want to learn more about how to model parts that I can't get anymore.

- I thought, man, I always wish that I could learn something like this. But I never went a career path where it would have been available to me. And so this was something that they were offering. I was really kind of surprised. So I just had to jump on it.

- I was a little bit intimidated. But then I started looking at the software a little bit more. And it's incredibly user friendly.

- And as they become more and more confident in the workflow, they're going to feel like they're able to design anything.

- I'm hoping that they will be able to be empowered through these tools to make more ambitious builds.

- It's been really cool to see multiple different groups of Autodesk come together to support this organization at Girl Gang Garage.

- We're excited to see where it goes.

- I think anything that you can do to step outside of your comfort zone and take a chance on learning something new is the best thing that you can do.

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ANNE PAULEY: So at the end of this entire process, we did a huge reveal of our vehicle build at SEMA, which is a huge car show that happens every year in Las Vegas. And not only did we have the opportunity to show everyone the vehicle, but we had an opportunity to bring everyone together in one place and meet all of the people that worked on the build.

So where we started to where we finished, we started out with a great condition body, but it did not have any of the modern components that the final build did, and took it to the finished, amazing looking vehicle that you see on the right. So the way that we started out the process on making these custom components is we did a lot of 3D scanning. So we worked with a local engineering company, PADT, which is not only a Stratasys reseller, but does a lot of engineering services, including 3D scanning. And so Pam Waterman, who you see in the picture, came into the shop and scanned not only the entire body, but lots of subsections where we were planning on adding these components.

So using those 3D scans, the scan data was converted into 3D models. So you'll see in that middle picture that the scans that we get off of scanning an entire car body, they're not really something that we can just immediately go and put on a 3D printer. So there is a lot of design work that happens in Fusion 360 between this point and when we get our final parts.

So to make these parts, we worked with Stratasys who were able to bring a printer into the shop so that we could make parts really quickly and iterate fast. And we also were able to work with them on printing some resin parts to get final aesthetic, watertight parts for the finished components. So some of the aesthetic parts that I'm going to be focusing on here are the custom door handles, shark fin antenna, and the rear camera.

So one thing to note about the shark fin antenna and the rear camera is those are parts that you would never see in a 1961 vehicle. That's all modern electronics being integrated into this 1961 body. And then some more functional mechanical parts are this cabin air duct, as well as a suspension adapter that we needed to integrate these aftermarket components into the vehicle build.

So starting out with the door handles, the challenge here is if you look in the upper right photo, the handles that came on the S60, which is the 29 donor vehicle, were huge compared to the '61 handles. And so we had to completely redesign these to not only fit the form factor of the vehicle, but fit the styling of the vehicle. So the '61 door did not have any of the mechanical assembly of a modern vehicle. So when you open and close the door, there's none of that nice, smooth, damper feel that you're used to on a newer vehicle.

So the door had to be completely rebuilt with all of these modern mechanical assemblies. So the design process that we went through here, we started out with those 3D scans of that part of the vehicle, as well as a separate 3D scan of the component in isolation. So basically, that the component that holds the aesthetic door handle as well as all of the electronics completely disassembled off of the main assembly.

So like I mentioned before, if you look at that 3D scan, it's not a perfect watertight body. And so we used that scan to find all of the reference geometry. And it was really, really critical that we build this off of a 3D scan. Because these are really complex surfaces and complex geometries that we're trying to snap onto and match.

And so starting out with that 3D scan, we found all of those geometries that we needed to snap to, modeled those, and then moved on to prototyping. So for prototyping, if you see in the lower two pictures, we did a lot of fit checks to make sure that we had that snap geometry perfect before we moved on to all of the aesthetic design. And then, once we had the aesthetic design completed, we moved on to the final part finishing.

So one note on the prototyping. We went through a lot of prototypes to get the look of this perfect and make sure that it was the best design that we could have and the smallest, while fitting all of the electronics that we needed to in. So the final part here was printed on the F370 Stratasys FDM printer and then was completely finished by professional automotive finishers that were working on the project so that it looks like it was a part made for this vehicle, even though it was completely custom.

So the shark fin antenna and the camera, like I mentioned, these are parts that you would never see on a 1961 vehicle. And so the challenge here was not only getting the mechanical assembly right, but it was getting the styling to match this classic car. And so the process we went through here was kind of similar, 3D scanning and reference dimensions followed by prototyping, followed by finishing.

So you'll see here, I actually use kind of a combination of images as well as the 3D scanning. So the way that I started out here was making fit check models to test just the interior geometry of the part, before even starting all of the aesthetics of it. So we had to not only match the electronics and make sure the part was fitting as tight as possible, but we had to match all of the curvature of the vehicle. So in addition to the parts that you see in the middle, there were a lot of parts that came before this to not only make that interior geometry, but also do a lot of fit checking to find that outer curvature of the roof and the rear trunk that the camera is attached to. And then the final printed parts for these components were made on in resin on the origin printer.

So you can kind of see what's going on in the model here. I used an overlay of the image and the 3D scan. And that really helped me work on matching the curvature of that roof.

So yeah, you'll see that this 3D scan was scanning the antenna component. So a lot of this antenna component was actually built into the underside of the roof. So it was kind of two fit check processes, both matching the electronics component and matching the roof curvature.

So the cabin air ducting and the suspension adapter, the S60 cabin air assembly was much bigger than the volume of the PV544 engine bay. And so we had to do some creative engineering here to shrink down some of the parts, which meant that we had to make some of these things completely custom, so taking assemblies and just shrinking them down and rerouting a lot of the ducting. So the assembly that you see in the top, that is an entirely 3D-printed assembly of those black parts. The original assembly, basically, it would take up the entire volume of not only that black ducting that you see, but also that coolant tank that we had to build in there and build custom brackets for.

And in order to make that part and make it fit, on this one, 3D scanning didn't really make as much sense as it did on some of the electronics components. Because we were working with a much more fluid assembly, that tank could move around to adjust for our entire design. And so on this one, we used XYZ reference photos, as well as reference dimensions, and built the assembly off of that. And we were able to reroute a lot of the ducting to a different part of the vehicle, which is not only, like I said, necessary because of the different volume around the engine, but it was also necessary because the intake for the vehicle engine was in a completely different location on the S60 compared to the PV544.

And then the custom suspension adapter, kind of speaking to the video that we watched before about bringing in the Autodesk Fusion 360 team to do learning days in the shop, this part was made by Bogi herself. It was the first part that she's ever CADed in Fusion. We needed the suspension adapter to bring in a new aftermarket suspension because the S60 suspension was much, much taller than what would actually fit in.

And so we had to purchase an aftermarket one that was much more compact, but had a completely different base on it. And that base, there was no adapter available on the market that you can buy for this. It had to be completely custom.

And so Bogi was able to learn Fusion 360 from scratch, do all of the measurements, learn 3D printing from scratch, and learn how to run the printer, and made that component and prototyped it and got it really quickly tuned in. So our initial build that you see in the picture is a plastic component printed on the printer in the shop. And we're working on replacing it with a machine component.

So like I said, the overall process on these components is we went from reference dimensions and then iterated and prototyped on those assemblies. And then we finished those parts to look like they came right out of a factory.

Awesome. Well, here's our entire team. If you have any questions, please feel free to contact me.