3D printing replacement parts: What are the advantages for your company?

Q: Can you make replacement parts with 3D printer?

It is now possible to make replacement parts with a 3D printer. You can print spare parts of your products to avoid physical inventory. This technique is already used in several industries such as automotive, or consumer goods industries.

Q: Is it legal to 3D print replacement parts?

It is legal to 3D print replacement parts if own the rights of the part you want to 3D print. You can’t 3D print and sell a part that you don’t own. Check out our ebook about intellectual property and 3D printing to get a better understanding of this situation.

Introduction

Advantages of 3D printing replacement parts

Creating custom-made parts

Additive manufacturing is offering a lot of benefits for many sectors. First, one of the biggest advantages of additive manufacturing is mass customization, making custom-made parts using 3D modeling software. 3D printing can not only enable you to create made-to-measure parts, but it is also an amazing and economical manufacturing method. Mass customization is also a great advantage when the manufacturer needs to find older parts that are no longer produced.

Another aspect is that spare parts production can be included in home appliances production, automobile restoration, or even for tooling and any kind of machine. It can also improve the quality of your customer service.

The benefits of on-demand manufacturing

Additive manufacturing is also a way to avoid stocking problems. Indeed, a company can easily be bothered with an inventory. 3D printing low volumes for your production, and for the creation of spare parts is now becoming a good solution. This way, you can get 3D printed parts on demand and you don’t need to stock them! Digitalizing production is a real advantage, and you should definitely start to think about it.

On-demand manufacturing is allowing to overcome interesting challenges when it comes to replacement parts. With 3D printing, you don’t have minimum production orders, you only print the parts you need when you need them.

3D printed spare parts could also be a great asset for your company. A lot of companies are relying on physical inventory to meet aftermarket needs. If these products are not sold, they become obsolete, which represents a massive waste for the company. As we will see later in this article, car manufacturers, such as Jaguar and Porsche are actually making the most of 3D printed replacement parts. Indeed, it can be difficult to find replacements, especially for older car models. By combining 3D scanning, 3D modeling and 3D printers, it’s possible to produce rare parts for cars, which is way more costly and difficult with traditional manufacturing processes.

When it comes to materials, the 3D printing industry is evolving quickly and never disappoints. Additive manufacturing also offers interesting materials, versatile materials like Nylon, and demanding materials like Polypropylene or PA6, already used in the automotive industry. From resin to a flexible filament, there is necessarily an option available for your replacement parts!

Companies making the most of 3D printing to create spare parts

Whirlpool

You certainly know about Whirlpool, the American multinational home appliance manufacturer. They started to use 3D printing in partnership with Spare Parts 3D. Indeed, the manufacturer is now digitizing its part catalog, to fight against obsolescence. As the company produces a lot of machines, they also need a lot of spare parts and it already has quite a huge catalog. In this case, additive manufacturing can be really useful.

This production method is particularly adapted to the production of spare parts for home appliances. Indeed, due to obsolescence of all kind of machines, we know that spare parts will be needed, and 3D printing will allow Whirlpool to produce enough parts, at a lower cost and on demand.

Porsche

The additive manufacturing technology is also perfect to manufacture car parts. Indeed, it can be difficult to find replacements, especially for older car models. But, by combining 3D scanning, 3D modeling and additive manufacturing it’s possible to produce rare (spare) parts for cars.

Do you know the Porsche Classic division? It is a division that is dedicated to Porsche’s classic vehicles. 3D printing is actually used for the production of spare parts for rare cars. Due to being rare vehicles, their original parts aren’t always being produced or found anymore. In order to have the fitting and accurate working components, they are 3D printed.

Additive manufacturing is a really convenient manufacturing process and quite economical when it comes to small batches. That is precisely what happened for the clutch release lever on the rare Porsche 959. This division used SLM 3D printing technology for steel, light metal, and plastic components to create specific 3D printed parts.

Jaguar

Here is another car manufacturer making the most of 3D printing to manufacture car parts for old vehicles. The company used 3D scanning to recreate the classic XKSS model from 1957. The full recreation took 18 months.

The only difference with the original car was due to modern safety requirements, but additive manufacturing allowed to recreate these rare parts.

The Volkswagen Group

Here is a company who totally understand all the benefits of additive manufacturing. They use 3D printing for their tooling processes, we already talked about this on our blog, but they are also 3D printing spare parts!

The car manufacturer is really making the most of 3D printing on different levels.

As you can see, 3D printing to produce spare parts is mostly used in the automobile sector, but it can be implemented more largely, like for the production of parts for home appliances, as we just saw with Whirlpool. The future of 3D printed spare parts is really promising for all manufacturers from all sectors!

Are you looking for a way to manufacture spare parts for your companies? Take a look at our online 3D printing service? Upload your files, get an instant quote and you will receive your parts in a few days.