At a glance
| Best for | Anything discontinued, unbranded, or too obscure for a spares stockist |
|---|---|
| You send | The broken part in the post, or photographs with a ruler beside it |
| Material | PETG — tougher and more heat-tolerant than PLA, which is what most repair parts need |
| Typical price | From £45 to draw it, plus the print. Most single parts land between £55 and £90 all in |
| Lead time | Drawing in 2–4 working days, then printing and post as normal |
| Maximum part size | 256 × 256 × 256 mm in one piece; larger parts split and joined |
What we take on
- Parts that snapped cleanly and can still be measured, even in pieces
- Parts where you have the matching half, the hole pattern or the thing it bolts to
- Obsolete fittings where the original supplier has gone or the model is long out of production
- Items you can photograph but cannot post — fitted, fixed or too large to remove
- One-offs. There is no minimum order and no tooling cost to recover
How it works when there is no file
There is no upload step here, because there is nothing to upload. The measuring is our job.
- Send what you have. Post the part, or photograph it on a plain background with a ruler or a steel rule alongside — the ruler is what makes a photo measurable rather than decorative.
- We measure and draw it. Calipers and CAD, not a scan-and-hope. A drawn part can be adjusted later; a scanned mesh usually cannot.
- You see it before it prints. We send back a render and the critical dimensions. Wrong hole spacing is much cheaper to catch here than in the post.
- We print and send it. PETG as standard. If it is a tight fit we print a test piece of the fitting end first and check it with you.
Where this works well
- The broken part still exists in recognisable pieces
- It is a functional fitting — a clip, bracket, housing, knob or mount
- The mating part is available to check against
- You need one or two, not a production run
Where it doesn’t
- Parts under load where failure is dangerous — steering, towing, load-bearing or pressurised
- Anything that gets genuinely hot; PETG softens well below engine-bay temperatures
- Springs, gears under torque, and thin snap features that were injection-moulded in a springier plastic
- Parts that are gone entirely with nothing to measure and no equivalent to reference
Why we draw rather than scan
3D scanning sounds like the obvious answer and often is not. A scan of a small plastic part gives you a dense, slightly noisy mesh of the surface as it is now — including the worn edge, the stress whitening and the bit that snapped off. You then have to repair that mesh anyway, and the result is difficult to adjust.
Drawing it from measurements gives a clean model where a hole is genuinely round and a face is genuinely flat, and where we can open a hole by two tenths of a millimetre if the first fit is tight. For the kind of parts people send us, that is almost always the better outcome.
What makes a photo measurable
If the part cannot be posted, a good set of photographs is usually enough. What we need is scale and squareness:
- A steel rule or caliper in the same plane as the part, not behind it
- Straight down on each face rather than at an angle, which foreshortens everything
- A plain, contrasting background — a sheet of paper is ideal
- Close-ups of anything that locates it: the hole pattern, a spline, a keyway, a clip barb
- The part it fits into, if you can photograph that too
If we cannot work from what you send, we will say so before charging anything.
Questions people ask about this
Can you copy a part that is still sold by the manufacturer?
We would rather not, and usually it is not worth it. If the original is still available it is normally cheaper and better fitting than a redrawn copy. We take on parts that are discontinued, unavailable in the UK, or absurdly priced for what they are. We also do not reproduce brand names, logos or badges.
What if it does not fit?
For a first-off fitting part we usually print the critical end on its own and post that, so you can check it before we make the whole thing. If a finished part is wrong on our measurements we redraw and reprint it at no charge.
Do I get the CAD file?
Yes, on request, once the drawing work has been paid for. It is your part; if you want the STL or STEP so a local printer can make more later, that is reasonable.
How strong will it be compared with the original?
Different rather than simply weaker. A printed part is strong across the layers and weaker between them, so orientation matters more than material. We print repair parts with the load running across the layers wherever the geometry allows, and will tell you if the direction of load makes a part unsuitable.
Send a photo and we will tell you if it is doable
No charge for looking, and we will say plainly if we think it will not work or is not worth doing.
Other repairs we take on
Already have a file? Price it instantly →