What plastic are intake manifolds made of?

A lot of modern vehicles use plastic intake manifolds. What plastic are intake manifolds made of - no guessing, either ya know or ya don't.

I worked with GM a dozen years ago on a big project and at that time, they were made from glass filled nylon 6/6.

Army plastic, sir

You will never know exactly IMO, it likely is rather proprietary and guarded..

Glass filled is however very likely.
I would be surprised if today its nylon 6/6, which is a great material, but would be leery if it has sufficient temp durability for today's applications.

Want to share the reason for question?

Just wondering about the possibilities of plastic high performance intakes. Unlike aluminum intakes where the sand molds take a lot of time and labor and the castings have to go through a machining process, plastic products come out of the molds pretty much "ready to ship" and the production process is much faster. The big expense is the finely finished molds.

I think I remember something like a phenolic resin, but each manufacturer
probably had their own composition.

Joe

Yes Glass filled or Glass reinforced nylon. The nylon pellets actually have short strands of glass (just like fiberglass) in the pellets. Being nylon it handles heat and having glass in it provides strength and ensures dimension (less warpage). Thats what OEM units are made from. The carburetor manifolds say they are phenolic material. This stuff handles heat well also.
The cost to build the injection mold will make you pass out. Gotta have guaranteed demand for many thousands of units to justify tooling cost.

Start with Dupont Zytel and work from there. Note there are a lot of different resins within a family that have different properties.

https://www.dupont.com/products-and...plications/automotive-engine-covers.html

This link shows the number of resins in the Zytel family:

https://dupont.materialdatacenter.com/profiler/1WeV0/

What about 3D printing them? They have printers that cant print in a lot of different materials now.

This is what I teach. The technology is improving with carbon fiber reinforced plastics, High temp resins, and a myriad of materials.

At the end of this path you need to figure out the
1. Material properties you need (Temp resistance, strength for given purpose, resistance to solvents, etc.)
2. Size of the print bed
3. Surface finish
4. Printer capable of water / pressure / vacuum products. (Many look good but fill them up with water and they leak)

An alternate method that is easily used is to use a 3D printer to print the bucks to shape the sand in the molds for casting aluminum. This is what I am about to start on if I can find a donor Hemi head to get some measurements from. This may not be the method the OP posted about, but by using the two piece manufacturing techniques of plastic manifolds (notice most have a seam where they are glued together) and the readily available, easy to use aluminum material his end goal could be achieved and possibly be better in the end for small productions.

Can it be done in a 3D printer? Yes because they can print steel strong enough to make a Colt 1911 that works just like traditionally manufactured one. NASA even prints rocket nozzles. Rigid to Flexible materials and lots of temperature ranges are easily selected also.

Like everything it is just a matter of time and money.

You can budget for an easy $700k+ for injection mold tooling on that.

You can budget for an easy $700k+ for injection mold tooling on that. [/quotI

I am somewhat surprised by 700k? I've had some experience supporting high end mold making. The most expensive I have seen was a 64 cavity, hydraulically rotated mold. I think it ran 900k including hydraulics for rotation and core pulls, it weighed over 10k pounds. It spits out plastic jars that appear to be glass. I realize jars are not intakes but the polishing these molds require exceed anything a intake would require. Not sure if a book mold could be made for intakes but based on low volume it would be something to consider!

Red

Looking back, it is downright amazing that Maximum Bob Lutz OK’ed a Magnesium tuned port long runner intake manifold for the iron V10 pickup truck engine.

High temp auto part plastic

https://www.plasticstoday.com/autom...eat-turbocharged-engines/210014833161714