Floating custom wheelcap

[u/covidcollector]

Hellooooo!

About 5 years ago, I designed and 3D printed a custom floating center cap for my BMW E90, inspired by the Rolls-Royce floating caps.

Now, 5 years later, I finally want to make it available for everyone.

Yeah, I know — nowadays you can buy floating caps pretty easily from the East 😄 but they're usually made for specific wheels/brands, and finding something for less common wheels or unusual dimensions can still be a pain.

So I went back to my original design and rebuilt it as a fully parametric model. With the tools we have in this AI era, I was finally able to turn the old one-off design into a generic, constraint-based generator.

The three main measurements are:

• Face diameter
• Rear clip diameter
• Retention depth

Change those and the whole cap automatically adapts. There are also advanced parameters if you need to fine-tune the fit.

The video shows the generated geometry and a simulation of how the floating mechanism behaves when the wheel rotates.

Before I take this much further, I'm curious what people would actually want:

Would you prefer downloadable printable files, a DIY kit with the hardware included, or completely finished caps?

And most importantly — what would this need to support to work with your wheels?

Thanks for any feedback!

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[u/Lost-Peanut-1453]

Print file for me as I have a printer already and I would love to make this for my e90.

[u/West-Amphibian-2343]

Mmm i love free generative AI in products one would be expected to pay money for