PROJECT ZEPHYR PRIME UPDATE: THe PRINTER HAS UNIONIZED
PROJECT ZEPHYR PRIME is Black Flag Racing’s progressive aerodynamics-development effort to improve the overall performance of our 2007 Honda Accord. The project includes an active rear wing, front splitter, underbody improvements, brake cooling, airflow management, and several other ideas that would probably concern the engineers who designed the car. We aren’t those engineers.
We are developing all of the parts with the finest materials available from Lowe’s, Walmart, and Amazon Prime. We are armed with knowledge drawn from the finest books from the local library, personal observations, internet research, and the dangerous confidence that comes from successfully completing one difficult task and immediately assuming we can do twelve more.
The good news is that Zephyr Prime is continuing to progress beyond a collection of sketches, theories, and conversations that begin with, “Hear me out.”
Parts are being designed. Prototypes are being printed. Foam is being shaped. Steel is being cut. Autodesk Fusion files are multiplying across our computers like rabbits.
The bad news is that our manufacturing department seems to have unionized, and overnight delivery has its limitations.
The employee leading the strike is our Creality Ender-5 Max. It has recently developed strong opinions about working conditions, and it has demands we are still trying to meet.
The Plastics Department Remains Operational—Technically
The Ender-5 Max became part of the project because its enormous build area gives us room to print meaningful pieces instead of dividing every component into fourteen smaller parts and gluing them together like a model airplane assembled during a custody dispute. The Ender 5-Max has a print area of 400-by-400-by-400-millimeter build volume, a direct-drive extruder, temperatures up to 300°C, and support for materials including PLA, ABS, nylon, and PLA reinforced with carbon fiber.
Build volume . . . . . 400 × 400 × 400 mm
Extruder . . . . . . . . . direct drive
Max temperature . . 300°C
Materials . . . . . . . . PLA · ABS · nylon · PLA-CF
Current status . . . . awaiting repairs
That sounded perfect.
It still sounds perfect.
As we learn how to use it, it will be perfect.
The printer itself has simply requested that we stop confusing “capable of” with “delighted to.”
PLA was our introduction. It is cooperative, relatively forgiving, and willing to become nearly any shape we request. It is excellent for checking whether a duct fits, whether two holes line up, and whether the highly sophisticated object on the computer screen becomes a highly sophisticated object that collides with the hood hinge.
PLA is the pleasant early phase of the relationship. Everybody is behaving. Nobody has met the extended family. It was also cheap and willing to do what we wanted without a lot of additional work.
Then we moved to ABS.
ABS is stronger, more tolerant of heat, and better suited to many of the functional prototypes we need for the car. It is also temperamental, sensitive to its surroundings, and perfectly willing to ruin nineteen hours of work because someone looked at it funny.
Our persistent problem has been heat creep and plugged nozzles. The filament softens where it should remain firm, the passage clogs, and the printer continues tracing the part in midair without actually depositing plastic. It becomes an extremely expensive Etch A Sketch operated by a ghost.
This week, the nozzle plugged during a 20-hour print. More precisely, it plugged at various points in three attempts to print the same object. We are losing a war we didn’t know we were fighting.
There are few experiences more spiritually educational than checking a nearly completed print and discovering that the machine stopped producing material sometime after hour 15. Then, while trying to clear the blockage, we broke the wiring to the blower fan. F_ck. In our defense, the hot-end cover has to be removed to clear a blockage, and the wiring is really small. Like, really small. And Fragile. Really fragile.
This was not part of the original troubleshooting procedure.
One moment, we were attempting to restore filament flow. The next, we were holding a loose wire and making the unmistakable expression of man who has truly screwed up.
The Ender-5 Max is currently awaiting repairs, a full inspection, and the possibility of couples counseling.
The Enclosure Needs an Enclosure Manager
Our enclosure has helped, but we are learning that putting walls around a printer is not the same as controlling the environment inside them.
ABS wants stability. The printer wants cooling in the right places. The electronics do not want to be slowly roasted. The filament does not want moisture. We would like all of these parties to reach an agreement without involving arbitration.
We need better temperature monitoring and control inside the enclosure so the print area stays warm and consistent without turning the machine into a countertop convection oven. The solution cannot simply be “make it hotter,” although that remains our preferred solution to most mechanical problems and several personal ones.
We also need to dry the filament before beginning a print.
We attempted to preheat filament during printing, which sounds reasonable until you realize it is the additive-manufacturing equivalent of drying your clothes after putting them on. By the time wet filament begins popping, stringing, clogging, or otherwise expressing itself, the print is already underway and you have to be emotionally prepared for the fallout.
From now on, we’ve learned, filament preparation happens before the printer starts. The material has to be properly dried, stored dry, and fed from a controlled container rather than being asked to overcome ambient humidity through grit and determination alone. Creality’s own material guide recommends drying or dry storage for moisture-sensitive materials, which is a more professional version of the lesson our printer has been screaming through clogged nozzles. Guess we should’ve read the directions.
Artificial Intelligence, Genuine Confusion
Generative AI is a new tool we’ve been using working alongside Autodesk Fusion throughout the project, with mixed but generally useful results. Its still challenging to use, but we think it might be faster.
So far AI has been excellent at helping us understand an unfamiliar Fusion tool, plan a modeling sequence, develop formulas, troubleshoot a feature, or suggest how a large part might be divided for printing. It is like having a highly educated assistant who has read every manual ever written but occasionally invents a button that does not exist.
That is the perk: it can help us move faster.
The pitfall is that it can help us move faster in the wrong direction.
You still have to check your work.
We’ve learned the hard way that AI will confidently help design a bracket that cannot be printed, a joint that cannot be assembled, or a beautifully sculpted component that occupies the same physical space as the radiator. Fusion then gives the bad idea dimensions. The printer gives it mass. Then reality, in the shape of an Accord, gives it rejection.
Our process has therefore become:
- Ask AI.
- Model it in Fusion.
- Print a prototype.
- Carry it to the car.
- Discover what everyone forgot.
- Return with less confidence but better measurements.
- Refine the model.
- Repeat.
This is not artificial intelligence replacing human judgment. It is artificial intelligence helping human judgment encounter mistakes sooner.
Enter PA6-CF and the Turbo Fan Hub Caps
The next material on our increasingly ambitious menu is PA6-CF, a carbon-fiber-reinforced nylon.
PA6-CF offers the stiffness, heat resistance, and strength we want for more demanding components, especially the pieces we are affectionately calling the turbo fan hub caps.
These will not be decorative wheel covers purchased from the premium aisle at Advanced Auto Parts. The plan is to print directional covers that seat over the Accord’s steel wheels and behave more like rotating fans.
As the wheels turn, the blades should help pull turbulent air from underneath the car and out through the wheel wells. That air would be drawn past the brake rotors and calipers, providing another route for brake heat to escape before being ejected through the openings in the steel wheels.
At least, that is the theory.
We are hoping the same fan action will help draw air from beneath the car and contribut to the overall pressure-management and downforce goals of Project Zephyr Prime. Ideally, after being drawn out, the airflow will rejoin the airflow around the car and become organized to produce compounded effects by the rest of the aerodynamic package—namely by the dive planes and surrounding bodywork, which will be assigned the unenviable task of taming whatever we have just thrown at them.
There is legitimate research behind fan-shaped wheel covers. SAE-published work has examined covers that use wheel rotation to draw air inward or push it outward, influencing ventilation around the wheel and altering the vehicle’s surrounding airflow and wake. That doesn’t mean our first homemade version will automatically produce downforce, cool the brakes, reduce drag, and make us irresistible to sponsors. But it might. Either way, we think it means the concept deserves testing.
It also means direction matters.
A fan rotating the wrong way may extract air beautifully on one side of the car and force it back into the wheel well on the other. This would be less “advanced aerodynamic development” and more “being too cute by half-measures.”
To combat this, we have separate left- and right-side designs, careful blade orientation, secure attachment, wheel-balance checks, brake-temperature monitoring, and progressive testing before the covers see race speeds.
Carbon Fiber: Now With More Ways to Fail
PA6-CF brings its own demands. The Ender-5 Max can reach the temperatures commonly specified for PA6-CF and it officially supports both nylon and carbon-filled PLA, but PA6-CF sits near the serious end of its capabilities rather than the “load spool and press start” end.
| Material | What it gave us | What it wants |
|---|---|---|
| PLA | Cooperative, forgiving, cheap | Almost nothing |
| ABS | Stronger, tolerant of heat | Stability, patience |
| PA6-CF | Stiffness, heat resistance, strength | Hardened nozzle, dry filament, stable temps |
The filament is abrasive, which means it can wear an ordinary brass nozzle. It also absorbs moisture with enthusiasm. A PA6-CF spool left exposed to humid air will drink from the atmosphere like it’s at the bar and just returned from deployment.
Printing the turbo fan covers requires a wear-resistant nozzle, thoroughly dried filament, stable temperatures, conservative settings, and test pieces considerably smaller than an entire wheel cover. The material manufacturer recommends a high-temperature hot end, an abrasion-resistant nozzle, controlled drying and storage, and careful filament feeding.
In other words, before we can print carbon-fiber-reinforced wheel hardware, we have to prove that we can print ABS without performing surgery halfway through the job.
Reasonable.
Cheaper.
Progress Is Sometimes a Loose Wire
Project Zephyr Prime continues to advance, although not always in a straight line and rarely without smoke coming from somewhere metaphorical.
We are learning Fusion. We are learning how to use generative AI without allowing it to supervise itself. We are printing prototypes in PLA and ABS. We are preparing to experiment with PA6-CF. We are developing active aerodynamics, brake-cooling components, and rotating wheel covers for a 2007 Honda Accord using materials from Lowe’s and knowledge assembled from books, research papers, internet forums, personal observation, and failures that refuse to remain private.
The blower wiring will be repaired.
The nozzle will be cleared, and cleared again.
The filament will be dried before printing.
And the turbo fan hub caps will eventually emerge from the Plastics Department, ready to either improve brake cooling and airflow beneath the car or become the most technically sophisticated wheel decorations ever installed on a Lemons racer.
Either result will produce data.
One of them may even produce downforce.
Either way, we are getting our learn on. Who said school wasn’t fun?
