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This morning the bodyshell mold was waiting on the printer bed


It's almost perfect except an issue on the rear part which look like a layer shift but is not a layer shift as frront did not have any issue. I guess this is probably a filament issue rather than anything else (ABS, transluscent (the only one I had at home currently), print with generic profile, adaptative layer set to max quality).


The issue only affect the very rear of the body, and mostly support rather than the body itself (i'm not going to do a reprint for this). The change of tone is due to adaptative layers.


The pictures were taken this morning before taking my breakfast. I launched the wing and went to the office.

Back home, I was quite impatient to look at the result... And the bodyshell mold is quite close. I can't push the bodyshell further on the rear, because the body top parts are narrower... But the line and the dims are there...


At least it is in the original spirit...


I can't say the same for the wing... Maybe there was still some leftovers of the previous day when I started to key in the wing dimensions   ... I will need to redo it...


But at least, the body is good enough

A friend send me pics of two bodyshells for the Mugen Mercury

The one that I modeled, first, unpainted :



And another one which appears to be the same as the Mugen Mercury proto bodyshell.

Few hours later... A few sketch reviewed, and the wing is now much better. (I suspected the issue in the first sketch when I saw the difference and I was right). I also increased tha angle on the sides. 


And few minutes later, I had the mould as well. It is actually easy to do, using surface and patchs to close the model to have a solid body...


The print is launched and in progress...

The new wing mould was printed last night, and it looks good...


And another view. It won't be exact copy (I still have some limitations in CAD), but it would be good enough to get a body in the spirit of the original to run the car...

New renderings following the updated wing...

I've seen this picture in the past in quite a few occasions...
It's a bit difficult to see but there is some indications from the picture itself...
I believe the chassis plate was fixed with simple tapping screws. We can see the rear sway bar, and there is a screw on the front shock tower that let me think there was a front sway bar. What I don't know about is the link between the rear arm and the chassis plate : toe-in adjustment? Something else?It would be great if I can find more pictures of this prototype, idealy of better quality, as I intend to model the 1987 Worlds Mugen RYUZ prototype...

A quick visualisation of the chassis components of the Mercury 4Xi using Fusion360 web visualisation tools. This looks quite well organized (compared to the same view for other cars)

so after doing some test prints of Silvertriple's mercury body, I had a chance to try and vac form. I tested out the wing print using adaptive layers, but I think I got something wrong and it was a bit rough. I also run out of grey and had to switch to yellow. As it was just a test, I didn't bother to clean up the prints too much, just sanding any lumps off. 



I did the test in 1 mm PETG, and overall it came out well, except I think I need to do more shell layers as I can see the infill pattern in the surface.


The wing formed well (apart from the print lines)


and I was happy with the rear of the body, despite the deep contours, it managed to form quite well.


​​​​​​​next step is to try in printing the mold in Nylon and PC, and try and get it smoother

I'm really impressed with the result already, specially looking at the way it is formed in the rear area of the body...On my side, the setup was 0.2 strenght setup as a basis, 5% gyroid infill, tree support, and adaptative layers...  The wing may need a very different orientation to be printed without too much lines, so either it is printed flat like it was and you would have to use some filler/sanding post processing to avoid the layers to be visible, or it needs to be printed with 20° degrees angle (I can easily modify the base to allow this, I think to get a better quality)...Somehow, this is very good, as indeed it looks promising in terms of process to rebuild new bodies . I probably need to invest more time in Surface/Form modelling so I get even better bodies...