Question on 3D printing
 

I'm no Luddite, but 3D printing is a technology which has passed me by somewhat, so hopefully one of you kind folk can offer some advice...

The headlights on one of my bikes are so poor that it's bordering on unusable to ride it at night. It's got standard halogen bulbs and I've bought some Philips LED bulbs which are fantastic - they look the part and the light output is perfect. The trouble is, they protrude from the rear of the headlamp unit slightly more than a standard H7 halogen bulb thanks to the LED heatsink, ergo the rear dust/splash cover doesn't seal back on to the unit.

What I'm trying to find out, is it possible for a 3D printing company to somehow make a 3D 'scan' of the current part then play around with the dimensions in software to then 3D print the part with a slightly larger depth, I would expect an extra 15-18mm on the current 12mm flange, to account for the heatsink on the LED bulb?

Pictures attached show the flange with the locking slots that would need to be extended.

I don't tend to ride in the wet or any adverse weather and it's not the end of the world if the above isn't possible but I didn't know if it was even 'a thing' before I approach a couple of companies to enquire about it and look like a noob.

Did you not get my reply to this?

Hi Michaela, I didn't, no :(

Well sorry about that! I must have pressed preview instead of send :(

Basically, I said this is easier to model from scratch instead of scanning, then it can be extended as much as it needs to be. I can print it in PETG which is pretty robust for outside use, and happy to do it for beer money +++

If there's a big heatsink on the LED which, presumably, gets hot then it'll need some venting and some sort of splash shield which is relatively simple to model. Printable plastics aren't particularly good with heat, but PETG is ok to 70-80C.

If you can send me the original then I can model it in Fusion360 pretty easily and print out a couple of versions to try +++

Would it get any hotter than a halogen bulb with no heat dissipation in the same headlamp unit though?

See pictures - it's mostly tucked away behind a fairing, so it doesn't have to be particularly pretty because it's not in a very prominent position.

Also attached a couple of pictures showing the dimensions of a standard halogen H7 versus the dimensions of the actual LED H7 that I have.

That would be most useful though if you find some spare time to play around with it. You can PM me your address if so :)

Yes, the back of the LED unit will get hotter than a halogen as the halogen dissipates all its heat inside the reflector, whereas the LED will dissipate most of it out of said heatsink. Jsut how hot, I don't know. Maybe we can try a couple of versions and see how they behave.

I'll pm you later :)