I thought it might be helpful if I posted about how my daughter and I created a 3D printed part to repair the grill in my 72 GS. The grill has had a broken area around a mounting stud since I bought the car around '06. I measured the square eggcrate holes around the area, and the intact mounting boss on the other side of the grill. My mechanical engineering student daughter used Solidworks software to create a model of the part. She created the eggcrate part separately first, then the mounting boss. We printed them on our Makerbot Replicator separately (easier to test fit), then merged the 2 parts into an assembly and printed the final part. We used standard PLA filament. I carefully chased the threaded hole in the boss with a 5/16-18 tap. To prepare the grill, I had to file the jagged edges square to accept the part we printed. I then used JB weld to attach the new piece. I'll repaint the whole grill before I reinstall.
Way Cool! show us a picture of the front of the grille after repair... Great father/daughter project. Thanks for sharing!! John
That's awesome! New technology to fix old school parts. I love it. My 12 y/o daughter is destined to be an engineer - Not sure what discipline yet (I'm mechanical). She's thinking Biomedical right now but that may change. We desperately need more engineers. Hopefully your daughter has gotten some other hands on experience w/you on cars, etc. The one piece of advice I'd give is for her to go to the local community college if at all possible and take some intro classes in machining. The best engineers I've known were all hands on and above that were also machinists prior. I'm on some machinist groups on FB and there's a constant battle between machinists and engineers because the engineers design stuff that either can't be made or the tolerances are way tighter than necessary. I was an auto mechanic fora few years before engineering school and am a self taught in machining (certainly wouldn't call myself a machinist but I own a CNC mill, Bridgeport, and lathe in my business and can program/run amd make stuff on them).
PLA might not withstand the exposure to UV and such; maybe do a final in PETG or ABS? My PLA stuff is just for prototypes and lithophanes. Great idea though; when you can’t find it, MAKE IT!
