So I've been thinking about this a lot lately. 3D Printing is growing fast, and it's already quite popular. Home Depot even sells 3D Printing machines. I've youtubed quite a bit of stuff, and there's some really creative people out there putting these to good use. I thought to myself it's only a matter of time before people start replicating body kits. Bumpers, fenders, spoilers, etc...

If you can essentially just download a CAD(a 3D model blueprint for printing) and create it in the matter of a few days in your own house, of course you would, wouldn't you?

3D Printers themselves aren't cheap, nor the material to create with them... at least not yet. The prices are steadily dropping. The cost for materials is very much inflated, but that's going to change soon too.

Here's a small video on printing car parts.

I'm really only considering body kits. I wonder how heavy the kit would be, and how strong they would be. The future is going to be interesting. Also there's 3D scanning, so you can take something like a Vertex kit, and replicate it yourself.

Eventually they're will be stores/warehouses were you can take things to get them 3D Scanned, and create a CAD file for personal use. Then go home and create it. Right now most personal 3D printers are small, and I've seen one person do a front lip which consisted of 6 parts I believe. So he had to put the front lip together, but when it was done it looked great.

I can imagine in the future instead of buying a body kit, buying a CAD file and going somewhere to get it printed. Or if you have the computer skills you can even edit the body kit, and completely customize it while retaining the perfect fitment the kits offer.

Also make your own badges, etc... Endless ideas here really. So I was just wandering, does anyone here have a 3D printer, have you thought of creating anything for your SC with it?

 

Imagine the market for SC center vents!

 

Actually they are still available to purchase...but as far as I know just for the year 2000 and it's a few bucks short of $2k for the piece.

Back on topic...that would be interesting. An entirely new market of parts!

 

Yes! no more breathing fiberglass shards!!

 

that's exactly what I was thinking as soon as I read the title. nice and small also.

 

This is going to grow very quickly as a niche industry. Eventually having trouble with patent/IP from Toyota/Lexus is a possibility but I'd hope that would be short lived. SC and Supra owners are in desperate need of some new OEM cosmetic parts and this is the answer. Also, just because you buy a new center vent for $700+ doesn't mean it won't already have weakened a bit over twenty years in storage. I bought a brand new 5-speed OEM shift **** for nearly $100 a while back and found that it had imperfections in the top plastic right out of the box! I'm sure 3D printing can do better for us.

Even beyond cosmetic parts for cars I really liked what Ford was demonstrating with printing test molds for engine parts. Imagine how that will affect the entire hobbyist market!

 

Lol @ center vents. Yea the possibilities are really endless. I can't wait to see these things drop in price and become more affordable.

 

They're already Making a 3D printed car' so why not parts.

 

$2k!? Damn, I have a spare one, maybe I could make some money here.. lol!

 

i have a custom headlight build where im 3d printing, its come to a halt though, should continue it soon though. i also 3D printed the old school katakana font toyota emblems for my car.

if you plan on 3D printing take into consideration that most libraries do it for cheap, if they do it.
if you plan on printing by yoruself at home the 3D printer and materials aren't the only cost, gotta take into account software as well, which, depending on the software, can be more expensive than the 3D printer and materials combined. i went to school for game design so i have autodesk maya on a student license, but it's more of an artistic program so getting things to be exact sizes is kinda hard. look into CAD programs rather than modeling programs. a good free program is Blender with which you can get started, but, it's not a CAD program. 3D printing is very easy, there's no technical hurdles or anything, you literally drop a file in the printers software and it prints it.

the prints that i have done have all been at the library, obviously because printers are pretty expensive still.

as for printing body kits, that's a long ways away, at least 5 years, since industrial size printers are in the tens of thousands still, some even hundreds. fun fact, there's even metal 3D printers, that's how koenigsegg makes their turbos. printing small parts however, i can help anyone get started, it's fun and really exciting being part of technological history.

 

Yeah, I can see the classifieds listing now: Buy a center vent, get a car free!

 

Thanks for that info I had no idea they were starting to have printers at the library, neat idea.

 

yep no problem. great sites that have free models ready to be printed are thingiverse.com yeggi.com and myminifactory.com. those are my favorite, but i haven't looked past the first google page.

 

Wow that first site is sick. I searched Lexus and got a few hits. Even a center console fix!!! IS model though, but still check it out. I want to go out and buy one now just to tinker around.

http://www.thingiverse.com/thing:111629

 

yep, there's quite a bit of sources