3D Printed Body Panels?

[FJ1200W]

Like many, one of my "air outlet grill" has a broken tab, and like many, I'll end up using plastic weld materials to repair it.

But I'm thinking about those 3D printers, and if we had this and other body panels scanned, and the codes available, we could easily print the parts at home.

Not a new idea, I know, but the time is coming.

The first price check I do takes me to a site, for one part the size of the air outlet grill, it was around a grand to get a good code.

So I checked on buying a scanner, and the 1st one I check, a nice hand held unit -

$24,800.00! WTF, I need to shit gears and think about something else.......

https://sourcegraphics.com/3d/scanners/artec/space-spider/

[Millietant]

My US family's business  (they're in the aerospace business, making parts for Boeing, UTC etc) have some really nice 3D scanners and 3D printers......yes, they were bloody expensive, but they're great pieces of kit.

My youngest did a 3D Computer Game Art degree at University and programmed the machines to 3D print some cool stuff while were out there on holiday a couple of years back, but the time it takes means 3 D printing isn't viable economically for mass producing small parts for bikes - in the business they usually use it for prototyping and for making display/marketing stuff.

This is something Ryan 3D printed, then he painted it once he'd finished (it stands about 12" tall). It takes pride of place in a display cabinet at their office, to show what they're capable of in 3 D printing. , but I hate to think how much it would cost to make, commercially

[akwusmc]

There are other options ...

Check out Youtube and search for "3d scanning xbox kinect". Besides the Kinect, you'll need a computer with a fair bit of computing power and patience.

[Waiex191]

At school my kid has gotten into photometery, which I have probably spelled wrong.  Basically he takes many pictures of an object from many different angles and the software figures out each camera perspective by comparing it to the other pictures, and it comes up with a model.  I'll post some of his stuff later.  Not sure if this would be good for making parts or just rendering a scene or item.