Desktop Windtunnel

My uncle gifted me a 1:48-scale die-cast F1 car. As it sat on my desk for a few months, my curiosity grew to see how it would behave in a Wind Tunnel. Thus, I designed and built a compact wind tunnel fitted for 1:48-scale cars and small enough to live on a desk. Note that this model is purely decorative. The dominant manufacturing constraint was limited print volume. The assembled tunnel is far larger than my printer’s bed, so the model had to be split into separate printable sections. When splitting the model, the main objective was to ensure ease of assembly and have a clean external finish. A risk with sectioning a part like this is alignment, as misaligned sections can introduce gaps that disturb the flow and do not look good. Thus I used dowel pins and lip-and-groove joints to ensurae a flush and aligned surface The finished tunnel met its goals of a printable design that assembles into a clean continuous duct, with visual flow through the test section, and a piece I’m happy to keep in view on my desk.