This is my rather large van.
This is my garage. It's a bit small even for medium sized vehicles and it barely fits my van. Parking can be challenging.
The rear view camera does make it easier, but I still have to be careful not to bump it against the wall.
There are plenty of parking stops available online, but why buy something when I can spend days making my own for twice the price?
I'll be using Fusion360 to try to come up with a solution. I don't want anything complicated, just a simple block that's slightly tilted to better fit the curvature of the tyre.
In Fusion360, I'll draw the tyre first, just for reference.
Now that we have that, let's design the actual wheel stop. I'll try to loosely imitate what's being sold online.
I've tilted the back side just a little. I don't know if that will actually make it more stable, but at least it looks better. Now that the side profile is finished, let's extrude it. I'll use the same width as my tyres, which are 23cm. You can increase that if you want to make it easier to hit the block when parking.
It's always a good idea to apply fillet on the sharp edges. It looks much better and it's more comfortable when holding it in hand.
If you plan on attaching the stop to the floor, then simply create two holes with the correct diameter and you're all set.
I'm renting my garage, so I can't drill any holes there. But because I'm parking right up to the wall, I could use something to rest the stop against it and prevent it from moving.
Let's design another, smaller piece. The back side will be flat so that I can place it against the wall.
Finish with the fillet again and we're all done.
Now I just have to come up with a way to connect them together. I could just print something, but it might not be strong enough and my printer is too small anyway (the piece would need to be ~70cm long).
Despite all the high-tech behind 3D printers, sometimes using a piece of wood is still the best solution!
I'm using the cheapest wood you can buy at the hardware store. The dimensions in my case are 25 by 50 mm, but anything more or less similar will do.
Back in Fusion360, I'm also creating holes of the same size in the blocks, making sure that they're at the same height on both ends.
With that done, let's see if we can save some plastic as well. Most of the force will be concentrated in the upper part, so I won't change anything there. However, the bottom part will barely be affected, so I think can remove some of it.
I'll just cut away a section like this.
And then repeat it for the smaller block as well.
As for the actual printing, we want our blocks as strong as possible without wasting too much filament or printing time. Stefan from CNC kitchen did a series of strength tests a while ago. According to his results, we can achieve maximum strength when using 6 perimeters, 6 bottom layers and 6 top layers with an infill of 15%.
Using those settings really makes a difference. The block feels very solid, almost like metal. I'm sure this will easily do the job.
Finally, we need to cut the wood to the correct length.
Everything seems to fit together nicely. Now, let's put it in place and see if it actually works.
Perfect!
