How many times have you been working on your car, needed to replace a part, gone to your favorite parts vendor web site to find the dreaded words “no longer available“? Next you’re on EBay crossing your fingers and hoping to find a used part somewhere. What if you could build your own replacement part by printing it out….well, you can today…sort of.
I’m going to turn things over to my daughter, Alicia, who is studying Mechanical Engineering and introduced me to a new world of possibilities.
Take it away, Alicia.
“Thanks Dad. Last term I was working in a lab where I had access to three 3D printers (Makerbots for those in the know). My supervisor was nice enough to give each of us $100 of free 3D print material. I had no 3D printing needs, so I asked my dad. He came up with numerous things that he would want printed for the Jag and we decided that seat belt covers would be the most feasible. The first step in any 3D printing adventure is to solid model the thing you want printed. I used SolidWorks since that’s what I have been taught in school. Dad and I spent three hours measuring and trying to design the best piece to be used as seatbelt covers. Dad had the idea of printing the sketch of the 3D part on paper and try it on the seatbelt roll to see how it fit. I think we went through four or five measurement changes before we landed on a model that seemed the best. Then Dad said he wanted a growler logo on the covers. Now, I’m good at SolidWorks, but not that good. So, we went on a CAD drop website and found a great model that someone else made! Threw that into SW, sized it, and we were ready to print. I took the models into my lab and watched them print. I took some pictures and videos for dad so that he could see our work come to life. To give you an idea, each cover took just over an hour to print and each logo was less than ten minutes.
Rapid prototyping is becoming very popular today. If you have the skills to solid model, you can design and print almost anything in a short amount of time. Even if you don’t own or have access to a 3D printer, there are many companies that will take your model, print it for you, and ship it to you within days! There are a few limitations to this type of prototyping, however. Most 3D printers will print plastics, PLA or ABS usually. These materials have low strength and cannot be used as a proper prototype in some applications. There are some new 3D printers that can print carbon fiber material which is an amazing feat but it is quite a bit more expensive so there is less room for error. Another consideration while 3D printing is, does your model have a flat surface to print on? Printing a perfect sphere, for example, is quite difficult without the use of supports. In fact, any surface that has an angle greater than 45 degrees usually requires upports since the material can’t layer on top of air! The final consideration when 3D printing with PLA or ABS material is which direction will the load be applied. This is most important in higher loading scenarios. The print will be stronger in the lateral direction (when printed) than the longitudinal direction. This can change the orientation of your print.”
I upgraded the rear seatbelts to early Series 3 models in the stock reinforced mounting location 
I have not been able to find covers for these 
Fashioning covers seems like a good experiment to start with. We spent a couple of hours manually taking measurements 
Alicia turned them into a SolidWorks model 
I asked for a little embellishment 
so she found a Jaguar growler file and we added that 
looking good!! 
Pretty fancy with the growler
Off to the printer! 
Two Makerbots working hard 
Over top image of seatbelt cover print 
Four growlers printed at once.
Parts look good 
and fit nicely 🙂 
Next step will be to finish and paint the part black and glue the growler badge to the back. I will update this post with the finished product when complete.
This was a simple cosmetic part, but it shows what the future offers us. When 3D printing in stronger and more versatile material becomes mainstream, I could see us all having a printer in the garage to make the unique parts required for our older cars…….pretty exciting!!!!