3d Printed Car Part

About the project

This project describe how I avoided buying an expensive kit to replace a broken plastic part of my car.

Project info

Difficulty: Easy

Estimated time: 1 hour

License: GNU General Public License, version 3 or later (GPL3+)

Story

I'm sure it already happened to you, while you are trying to remove a plastic part in your car in order to maintain it, you end up yanking it and breaking it. While your initial goal was to take care of your daily driver, you just did the contrary.

Details

Making mistakes ..

At the beginning I just wanted to remove my glove box in order to change a blown fuse, unfortunately I also broke a plastic hinge in the process.

The glove box area, the blue part is the replacement, the black one is the original.

I looked on ebay for a cheap replacement, nothing was available. One specialized website offerred a complete glove box replacement but it was really expensive. Crazy glue didn't work very well as the part must be a bit elastic when the glove box is inserted or removed.

Thankfully, the right hinge survived, like an endangered species, I was able to clone it

Since I had almost unlimited access to Up Box 3D printers witch print fantastic ABS parts, I thought 3D printing could be my saviour.

The design

I decided to take measurements and recreate the part using 3D printing. Since the pastic i'll be using has different characteristics, I didn't do an exact copy. Also injected plastic parts are usually complex for various reasons including being moldable, reduce plastic volume etc ...

The 3D print

I printed two copies with various orientations, one broke right away as expected because the Z axis orientation made the legs very fragile. I installed the second one 3 years ago, it's still does its job perfectly as of today.

The 3D printed clone, who said clones were color accurate !?

Credits

Photo of Muls96

Muls96

https://www.linkedin.com/in/brieuc-du-maugouer/

   

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