Porsche Wind Deflector with Edge Lighting [from CAD, prototyping to finish]
 

A few weeks ago my friend (987 owner) and I are sitting in the back of a cab (i.e. taxi lol) and we see this BMW Z4 standing still right next to us at a traffic light. During that 5 secs long silence and awkward staring moment there weren't any words to describe how beautiful this thing was (frozen x2 lol). On the 6th second, we both say at the same time: "I need that" (that, illuminated edge wind deflector thingy)

So beautiful. With its Look & Feel possibly amplified by the surrounding lighting, urban environment, the car, the Z4 logo, the hot shanghainese gal driving....... I have no idea what it was. And until today I still can't figure out what made this thing standout so beautifully, why the obsession, etc etc... so I guess we'll have to put some on our Boxsters and find out by ourselves.

We actually found a few made-to-order kits and the nearest available for the boxsters was in JP. Unfortunately > $375+shipping way too expensive for what it is really. Fair enough but since we have all of that advanced tooling in-house already and easy access to all the materials locally, there is not much stopping us designing our own :)

Fun-cool-easy project on the engineering scale so using the same format of another DIY thread, I'll try my very best to entertain and document all of the steps we've taken to get this designed, installed and shining like no other wind deflectors in-the-world!

http://986forum.com/forums/uploads01/01a1415299027.jpg

^ Here goes a (poorly 3D rendered) visual of the wind deflector when illuminated in red. In reality the top "edge" should be illuminated. I'll learn all about 3D rendering software and their adv light refraction features in another life maybe.

I am still unsettle on the etched graphic I'll be borrowing; maybe PORSCHE, maybe the badge, both or maybe something completely out of context (tribal, tattoo, sun, unlimited really). However, I am 100% convinced that the red color is exactly what my guards red boxster car needs

Stay tuned and who knows, if there is a demand I may manufacture a few made-to-order kits for you guys as well ;)

Subscribed!

http://986forum.com/forums/uploads01/021415299542.jpg

^ First thing first, get the Boxster 986 wind deflector assembly 3D modeled. The organic glass, the bracket, the clips, literally everything and all that within a tolerance of (+/-) 0.05mm.

Before someone ask... nope I haven't gone crazy (I think). The reason I was sooo picky RE the details of the bracket is because I plan of designing some durable clips made of aluminum (comes with a 25 years warranty lol). I am a bit tired of replacing my plastic clips every 2-3 years (changed them 4 or 5 times now I think... lost track). Sorry but those stock plastic clips sux big time so this will eventually need to be 'fixed'.

http://986forum.com/forums/uploads01/041415299565.jpg

^ The 4mm thick glass slides in/out of the bracket pretty easy. Slam it inside a commercial grade digital scanner and off you go. 2D... can't be hard to model lol
The slot and two holes are there to accommodate the edge lighting module that I have prototyped. Below visual is a quick preview of what it will look like:

http://986forum.com/forums/uploads01/031415300058.jpg

As things develop I'll update. If any of you guys have advice or any special requests, please shoot ;)

Yep. I want one. Just not sure what I'd want for design and color.

:cool::cool::cool::cool::cool:

Yeah, pretty dang cool!! subscribed as well!!

Fred. You are crazy....
In a good way!

Do you have too much time on your hands? LOL

I might just be interested in one as well
I would go with

PORSCHE
LOGO
BOXSTER (S)
986 (S)

Personally I would weant something subtle, maybe no more than 1 in high along the bottom

Great idea!

Not sure if the metal clips you plan to use would solve this, but I drilled a very small hole in my deflector so that I can secure it to the roll bar with clear fishing line. Perhaps you have a more sophisticated way to make sure it doesn't fly off at 80mph. Just a suggestion.

Looking forward to seeing the finished product!!! :cheers:

Oh Yeah. Great idea. Especially the clips for the windscreen. The plastic windscreen parts on the car and the windscreen are not going to last forever. They get brittle with age which is how I broke a clip. To avoid a repeat - I always leave the wind block in place. Metal replacements will be perfect.

I wanted one of these years ago for my S2000, but the guy making them couldn't get the design I wanted correct.

AAAAAARGH! Fred's at it again!

Might as well set aside some cash right now. Sigh...

Subscribed ........ for me I'd like a subtle Porsche crest or just 986 S.

Norm - can't think of anything costing a whole lot of dosh in there mate. Beside, I plan on giving a cracking deal to those who've supported and trusted me during the dev of those bi-xenon headlights. I owe you, Charles, and many others here ;)

Quick update:
As silly as this look, it is a awful lot of work. Just selecting the right materials can be a pain. That perfect organic glass is hard to find. Plenty of manufacturers but when asked for quality cast acrylic samples (read standardized pmma), they send you sub standard acrylic with impurities or something completely different hoping you'll just get on with it (e.g. plastic/acrylic, PC, extruded acrylic). Had it all already. Not fun.

So I'm off to do site visits this weekend. To see how the stuff is manufactured just to ensure we are getting that apparently hard-to-find quality "cast" pmma stuff that we deserve, not the extruded one or "more plastic".

Quality LEDs/PCBs are other things I am having great difficulties finding. The locally made strips are 'okay' but man... when you look under the hood and test those you guess they could be done better e.g. the PCB on those common LED strips are as thin as 0.2mm (loosing volts like crazy). Yes it works some will say but I'm after something a little more 'robust'. Good news is I know of someone here who gave me a sample of what we need (3528smd, 5mm*0.7mm pcb, imported from Taiwan). I am in discussion with the manufacturer atm... basically trying to convince him to ship me over a small (micro) qty lol A sml qty for these guys is a full container :/

You guys wait until you see this thing finally lit up on the Boxster car. It will be absolutely stunning x100,000 and will worth every bits of effort I promise.

Nice. So I guess we can say most agree we need a subtle look & feel for our boxster car.

No stupid bright LED (imagine the arch/rays above the car when let's say driving in fog or dust lol) and NO full window etching (I'd say a 20% of its surface area max). All positioned mid/lower.

Color wise.... the red will be a challenging one. Red will definitely need to be 'subtle' I fear. Just hope it won't conflict with the other less important DOT safety equipment of the car lol. Blue, warm/cold whites and "amber" should be safe and look pretty awesome ;)

:dance: Amber edge lighting... you guys with yellow box should love this one

Any advice, by all means, share in

Another idea and I have no idea if this is feasible because I know basically nothing about LED technology. But I believe for anyone that has painted roll hoops they may be interested in the LED's matching the color of the roll hoops...........or I could be way off. For me my roll hoops match the car which is arctic silver so silver LED's would be cool. Just a thought.

I think your original posting with the crest and the PORSCHE looked amazing. Very classy and a good size IMO.

Red lighting might cause some issues, being on the rear of the vehicle. Maybe some of our law experts can speak to that? Blue would be pretty sweet. Can you do a silver led or would it just show up white?

The cool white would be the nearest to artic silver type match. Silver boxster, white boxster. Charles has this awesome blue interior lighting... can't wait to see what the blue edge lighting would do for his (I also have the green you like, Charles!)

The module will be held by two little screws so it could be fun for some to source out their own led filters/diffusers (cheap, available online in most photography store) and do their own shades if required - just add a strip of that material on top of the LED strip and you get a totally different tone.

To start with I aim at using the primary LEDs (RGB), warm and cool whites. Warm white could be nice for those tan interiors... I'll try them all and snap a few shot no worries

Also have strips of "UV" lights (black light, call it what you want...). All good fun

LOL! That is pretty much what I thought :cheers: Fred, I am sure what ever you come up with, it will be first class! I like your original rendering, which is more or less what I have now, without the LED's of course. I would love blue or white lighting. Maybe a module that can do multiple colors?

http://986forum.com/forums/uploads01...1415374546.jpg

Arctic Silver box here; am thinking white or off white would be beautiful, and understated.

I know what your deflector look like Bruce. In fact I got the idea from one of your pic and laser cut myself some sticker autumn '13 - Very same. Still got them :)

I know what you mean by using the RGB switching color handheld thingy. Problem being we don't want to have 4x wires coming out of that module. Forgot the name of those interior trims that snaps onto the boxster roll-bar. The module's power cabling will snake under these, exit from behind the headrest and go tap into the clam's brake light 12VDC (or where ever you guys fancy tapping current from... electric seats, rear defrost plug.. if not using the mirror defrost?).

I think those roll-bar trims will do just fine with only 2 small gauge RED+BLK wires without any issues. Add more wires and most likely that snap-on trim will need some glue to hold on instead ;)

Dunno... most likely I'll have to order rolls and rolls of those LED if I want them from Taiwan. What I can do is give spare strips in all colors so you can chg them as you like. Mood lighting lol .....not paying much for LEDs these days I tell you ($2~3 each 200mm long strip? something like that....)

Awhile back we had a sponsor of the board that did the same thing, now their site is called WindRestrictor.com, at the time they did not offer the LED lighting on the Boxster but did the laser etching. Seems they will be producing soon.

http://www.windrestrictor.com/boxster_gallery/imgs/boxster_3b.jpg

How will yours be compared (Costs/Style) ?

:cheers:

The glass will remain in its stock format/size/mounting assy. The module will achieve the same result but with an emphasis on simplicity (compact, stealthy, heat managed). Without any fancy on/off switch, dimmers and the huge black box that's needed on some fancy setup I've recently seen out of JP. In fact, something I didn't like from that Z4 was that weird and huge looking black box coming out 1.5" off the bottom of the deflector. Other than that it was all sexy stuff.

That Boxster glass is tiny... hard to squeeze stuff in there without making it look 'heavy' lol

Cost-wise; of course mine will cost $3,845 more than all the other edge-lit wind deflectors that you can find In-The-World ;)

Yes, the fewer wires the better! I didn't realize multiple colors require multiple wires. I'm glad that I could provide some inspiration:cool:

still might be a bit early, but here goes, I'LL TAKE ONE!!

While I'm not excited about the LED thingy ... I'd definitely be interested in durable clips (metal). Subscribed!

Your original rendering looked awesome to me. I like the size and style you used. I would definitely be interested. PM me when you have it nailed down, please.:cheers:

Oh oh oh. Christmas gift is a little bigger. At this point my wife asked "just what does 'stuff for the boxster' mean?" Lol.


Will you anodize/paint the clips?

I'm in. :cheers:

^^^^^

You guys so so so cool, thanks for the support and encouragement, as always!

@Coaster - lol on the wife's comment. Clips will indeed be anodized and dye'ed in choice or colors. They'll have too if we want them to last 25 years. Noting harder than aluminum with a thick anodizing coating. Keep those for last, edge lighting on the box first!

Visited a factory where they process pmma acrylic - and others lol. Got samples and test etching those as I type. I puke my chest out when I walk out of there this morning... not the fanciest place I've been (oh man the smell there). The whole town is an 1.5hrs drive north-east of Shanghai (sea side). "Chemical Town" nobody lives there or around, and everybody working in the area looks a bit green :/

Anybody wants/needs a truck full of plastic?!

Just dropping in some visuals of the prototype assy and how things works, where's the LED strip located, how heat xfers to the module, wiring, etc.

As you can see, edge lighting is one hell of an advanced technology and require a great deal of brain power. Already thinking of rising the price from $3,845 to $6,000. Some other good news, I'll be machining/anodizing the module's front and back covers during the beginning of this week so hopefully I'll have something to mount onto the glass by this coming weekend.

I'll update then!

http://986forum.com/forums/uploads01/051415467343.jpg

http://986forum.com/forums/uploads01/061415467355.jpg

http://986forum.com/forums/uploads01/081415467373.jpg

http://986forum.com/forums/uploads01/091415467390.jpg
^ The module's back cover is machined out of 6061 aluminum and is a one-piece part! That lip (what the LED strip sits onto) is what absorbs the energy/heat generated from the LEDs. With the wind/air hitting on the module's heatsink it should be more than sufficient cooling to keep those miniature LEDs cool and happy ;)

Looks like you're having a lot of fun with SolidWorks, Fred.
Did you consider of doing a thermal simulation?

Haha yes, better enjoying SW because HQ is making it redundant by 2015 :/ We're moving to AutoCAD Inventor seats (only) both at the R&D and manufacturing ends. No more him on SW, her on AutoCAD, them on Catia, etc.... e-v-e-r-y-b-o-d-y will need to cope with Autodesk by mid 2015. Go figure....

RE Simulation. I have the SW Simulation module running on my workstation however the Flow Simulation is not (needed for air cooling type sims). I do my own simulations however but mainly to gauge designs/shapes/parts vs their types of materials (e.g. fatigue, stress, etc). A thermal analysis coming from me would be totally redundant in this LED application. All I could do is highlight how heat is transferred from one end to another. Plain thermal loads, convections and/or radiation per material in both transient and steady states. Boring and rather useless... without air. Given aluminum dissipate heat 2,000x faster than any other composites (e.g. plastics)... we can call it a safe $3 worth of LED strip investment (I think!)

Beside, try asking a Chinese manufacturer what are the "convection coefficient" values in BTU of their super High Tech LED strips. Luck with that mate....lol

On a far more important issue, I am having great difficulties selecting the right visual effect for the little guards red here. I kinda like the PORSCHE 986 best in all honesty but also like the one with the badge & Porsche (Bruce's). HELP! lol

Just throwing in these for inspiration. PM for the Illustrator/vector template if anyone is interested in making his/her own (I'll do those Made-to-Order no worries). Google "FREE VECTOR" for some ideas (tribal?)

http://986forum.com/forums/uploads01/011415522711.jpg

http://986forum.com/forums/uploads01/021415522720.jpg

http://986forum.com/forums/uploads01/031415522727.jpg

http://986forum.com/forums/uploads01/041415522736.jpg

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http://986forum.com/forums/uploads01/081415523203.jpg

lol getting closer....

Another suggestion, the wire to power these should be a pigtail with a connector on the end or the frame should have a connector that the power wires plug into. I'm thinking if you have to remove the windscreen for any reason it would be nice to just pull apart a connector and be done. Any ideas where we would tap into for power to light these ? Love what you have designed so far !

FWIW, vastly prefer the Porsche crest and Porsche lettering beneath (next to last in post #32). Thanks - keep it going!!!

Well spotted. You are right and the only way I think it would work is by having a 'flat' style micro connector so it fits under the roll-bar interior trim (what is the name of that trim btw, mine are in leather... snaps onto the roll-bar, do these have a name?)

Something like on the pic below:
http://www.miniatronics.com/Merchant...ect-home-h.jpg

RE Tapping (hmmm still debatable). I was thinking getting the 12VDC from the clam shell brake light (nearest, easy to reach/snake too). I can provide a loom of about 2m long with the kit.

Wonder what our good friend Charles (member Particlewave) thinks about this idea. He is an Electrical Engineer by trade, and has a Porsche car just like ours. You think he'd be willing to help us out on this one?!

"Paging Mr Particlewave, paging Mr Charles Particlewave. Please pick up a white paging telephone. Your needed in the 986 Forum DIY Project Guides Room!"

No worries - he'll be here shortly. :D

The Porsche crest and lettering will be perfect!

Absolutely my vote, hands down. I really don't think another Boxster script is necessary or close to appealing.

There is a connector for the rear defroster in that area.