Steering rack gaiter

thingiverse

I'm having trouble finding a suitable steering rack gaiter for my car, so I've considered making one out of TPU material. It's not quite perfect yet, but using the thick-walled file, I was able to create a nearly flawless one. The thin-walled file might work well as a single-layer or spiral vase print, but I'm still experimenting with that. As a beginner in Solidworks, my design is far from ideal, but it looks acceptable. The topmost bellows surface tends to remain porous due to difficulties in holding it steady and possibly being too thin. I haven't yet tested the gaiter on an actual car, but it's incredibly strong and can stretch up to twice its printed length. However, it would benefit from a softer flex than 95 shore, which might make supporting it more challenging. Update May 2018 Printing the gaiter as folded re-entrant designs solves the issue of them becoming floppy and enables me to print one large enough for real-world applications. The straight-sided design works well but lacks stretchiness. Both print effectively with standard TPU settings and are watertight. The straight-sided design inverts smoothly, while the center section of the bellows design remains dimpled.