leolo007

hello, I am trying to get dxf or dwg files of intake gaskets. Anyone know where I can get them? The idea is to make gaskets similar to hondata's gaskets. Also wondering if anyone knows specifically what material these gaskets are made of. Ive heard teflon but that may not be entirely true. Also how thick these gaskets are. Thanks!

Fabrik8

They're not PTFE, PTFE is too soft and deforms too easily. It's also not the cheapest plastic you can get either.
There are a few plastics that are harder and still have low thermal conductivity, just pay attention to the coeff of thermal expension. If you can get a PTFE blend, you may have better luck than with pure PTFE. Get in good with someone who owns a waterjet and you can make them fast and cheap.

Good luck getting dxf files for those, people aren't usually willing to give them up for free after the time or money involved in either CAD entry or manual scanning. I tried to get files to make intake manifolds for a special project and had no luck.

RandomTask

For a price, you can always send me a gasket and I can make you a dwg file. Hell, i'll even through it in inventor and make it 3d for ya.

leolo007

Yep thanks for the advice. I work at a place where we have a waterjet and we use SolidWorks for our drawings. I would rather get the dxf file to save me the time of drawing the gaskets from scratch. I guess I'll have to buy oem gasktets and deal with it. Thanks anyways, anymore advice on what kind of plastic would be good?

Fabrik8

You'll have to take a look at some datasheets, or general properties if you can find them somewhere. You're just looking for something with low thermal conductivity and not a lot of thermal expansion. You may want to shoot for a plastic that is similar to the coeff of expansion of aluminum. After that, make sure you factor in the cost. No one will want to buy a thermal gasket that costs a lot.. It's great that you have access to a waterjet, you can't get any luckier than that for making a lot of car parts.. If you have a digitizer it will really speed things up, the gasket doesn't have to be perfect, the only thing that matters is the ports and the bolt pattern, so a lowres digitization is plenty if you're going to clean it up in Solidworks. Good luck!
If you're wanting to make money with gaskets and stuff, you may want to think about making turbo flanges and exhaust (head) flanges for turbo setups. You should be able to sell a lot of those locally if you get your name spread around.

i'm jealous, I'd love to have a waterjet for trimming composites parts..

leolo007

Hey thanks Fabrik8 for all the advice. The only problem is "locally" for me is Puerto Rico and here people like to do most of the work themselves. But Im definetely looking into making some turbo flanges. Thanks again!