3D printed GMC grilles

[Kim Burke]

Where are they?
I'm waiting for some enterprising young man to start building grilles with this new technology. What are the roadblocks, can anyone tell us?
They're plastic, lightweight, and small enough to fit in a printer.

I'll find an old one, eventually. My luck, 2 months after I do, they start repopping them for $40.

 

[Crispy]

A 3d printer to make something of that size would be in the 10s of thousands of dollars. My company bought a smaller one (about 1000) and the biggest item it could make was 11X8X8 and that would take 30+ hours and probably multiple spools of filament. So it seems like time + money / market demand is the problem. I wish 3d printers were a bit more accessible but I'm sure in time we'll making radio kits and such for ourselves.

 

[EvilGenius]

I own one, but it is small. Max build area is something like 6"x10"x12"

When my truck gets to a point where I start putting stuff on it instead of removing things, I have hopes to use my printer to make stuff. I haven't really given much thought as to what yet though. Could probably make some sweet window switch covers or radio knobs. Things like that.

 

[Hatchet54]

There are (were) websites that allowed you to print your own plans on industrial machines and they would ship it to you. The cost was really tangible too. Is that still a thing?

I had an interest in the tech when I first heard about it, but after seeing some real life examples I got kind of over it. Would probably be great for this application.

 

[4WDKC]

There are (were) websites that allowed you to print your own plans on industrial machines and they would ship it to you. The cost was really tangible too. Is that still a thing?

I had an interest in the tech when I first heard about it, but after seeing some real life examples I got kind of over it. Would probably be great for this application.

Thingamajig I believe it is called, there are stuff out there for cars a guy on the corvette forum just uploaded the .sti file to print your own adapter to install the more powerful C4 blower in a C3.

 

[Kim Burke]

I'm sure there are enough GMC guys that would buy a pristine new grille for $299 for instance. I just paid $500 for a dash bezel and pad.

 

[Frankenchevy]

I wonder what the $35 grill from china will fit like that I just ordered from summit. I think its a goodmark?

it's probably going to be garbage.

I should just blast my oem one with baking soda and paint it, but I'm over painting for the time being. I saved the grille and bezels for when I'm feeling motivated.

 

[legopnuematic]

I suspect the biggest hurdle is trying to get around the licencing associated with making reproduction items that have the GMC branding on them. Really 3D printing wouldn't be the best method for reproducing grills, as they would take a long time, lots of filament, require ABS or similar filament as PLA does not hold up to the elements. ABS requires higher ambient temps and needs fume extraction. The best way would be to injection mold them how they were done by GM originally, quicker and most likely cheaper. As for machine size, my 3D printer is an Ender 3 and it is constructed out of aluminum extrusions, so it would be very possible to get longer extrusions and timing belts and make the working area of the machine much larger in all axis' as the printer doesn't know how large it is, they have one limit switch on each axis that it runs into to find its home/zero location and the maximum dimension is taken care of in the slicing software/gcode.

 

[idahovette]

Boy I wish I understood all that, maybe not. I'm too old! LOL

 

[ajordan282]

The problem is fronting the money to kick something like this off.

It would be a LOT of work, you'd have to have pretty high demand to make it anywhere near affordable. First would be modeling it in CAD or 3D scanning one, that could be big bucks. In terms of printing, typical FDM just aint gonna cut it quality-wise, you'd see all the layers and stuff. And youd have to print it in sections and then fasten it together, so there'd be joints and finishing work involved to clean them up (unless you had a MONSTER printer). That said, if enough people get together and put up money, anything is possible. And depending on how much money and the qty, you could have someone like http://www.artcorp.com/index.html do an 3d printed investment casting situation (but you aren't gonna be meeting your $400 target unless you've got probably 75-100 people who have already ponied up $$$ to kick it off).

I'm an enterprising young man, I own a CNC machine shop. I don't see money in this, especially when there are still some perfectly good grills hiding out there. So unfortunately I wouldn't touch it, at least not until demand got a LOT higher!