Every week someone arrives with a broken plastic part no dealer will stock. The car is fine. The engine is fine. A four-gram clip has ended its life and taken a door card with it.
After a few hundred of these, patterns show up. Here are the ten we see most, why each one fails, and what we print it in.
1. Interior trim clips
The small clips holding door cards, dashboard panels and kick plates. Original tooling was retired decades ago, and the aftermarket only covers the popular chassis.
Why they fail: thirty years of heat cycling drives the plasticisers out of the original material. The clip goes glassy and shears at the thinnest section.
What we print them in: PA12 nylon by SLS when they need to flex and re-clip, ABS when they're rigid and hidden. Nylon clips outlive the originals because the material yields instead of cracking.
2. Dashboard vent surrounds
Brittle black plastic that cracks first on any sun-baked dash, usually at the mounting tabs rather than the visible face.
What we print them in: ASA — UV-stable, heat-tolerant, and it takes a bead-blast finish that reads as factory texture. Where the original grain is deep, we scan the intact section and carry the texture into the model.
3. Emblems and badges
Roundels, model scripts and boot badges that snap off, yellow or lose their chrome.
What we print them in: SLA resin for the detail, then primer, paint and clear coat. Resin holds crisp lettering that FDM cannot.
Worth knowing: manufacturer logos are trademarks. We reproduce badges for owners restoring their own cars — not as branded merchandise.
4. Window switch surrounds and bezels
The plastic bezel around power window switches, usually the first interior part to go because a thumb pushes on it several times a day for twenty years.
What we print them in: SLA for detail-heavy bezels, ASA where the part is large and simple.
5. Glove box latches
A small hooked lever carrying the whole load of a slammed lid.
What we print them in: SLS nylon, with the hook thickened slightly against the original. This is the clearest example of a reprint being better than new: the factory part failed because it was under-designed, so we don't copy that part of it.
6. Heater and fan control knobs
Knurled knobs that crack around the splined shaft.
What we print them in: SLA when the knurl and lettering matter, FDM in ASA when they don't. Backlit lettering can be printed as a separate translucent insert.
7. Trunk and tailgate release handles
Interior pull handles that break at the pivot.
What we print them in: SLS nylon. This one is load-bearing and gets yanked, so it is nylon or nothing.
8. Sun visor clips
The clip holding the visor to the headliner — small, cheap, and enough to make the visor hang in your eyeline.
What we print them in: FDM in ABS or ASA. Fast and inexpensive; usually printed as a pair with a spare.
9. Seatbelt guides and B-pillar covers
Guide covers that fade, chalk and crack.
What we print them in: ASA, colour-matched and textured.
Worth knowing: we reproduce covers and guides — the cosmetic parts. We don't print load-bearing components of a restraint system, and no one reputable should.
10. Engine bay clip-on covers
Battery covers, fuse box lids, hose clip mounts and cable guides.
What we print them in: ASA for heat and UV, or glass-filled nylon where the part is structural or sits close to a heat source.
What we can and can't reproduce
We're straightforward about the line:
- Yes: non-structural plastic and nylon parts — trim, clips, covers, bezels, knobs, guides, housings, brackets that don't carry safety loads.
- Case by case: parts that carry moderate mechanical load. We'll tell you which material and process it needs, or that it needs to be machined instead of printed.
- No: safety-critical components — steering, braking, restraint or airbag parts. Printed plastic has no business there.
How to order a discontinued part
- Send photos. All sides, plus a shot of any part number moulded into the back.
- Send a measurement or two. A caliper reading across a known feature lets us verify the scan scale. A ruler in one photo also works.
- Post the broken original if you have it. A worn sample beats reference photos every time — we 3D scan it, rebuild clean CAD, and improve the failure point.
- Tell us how many. One clip and forty clips are very different jobs, and forty is cheaper per unit than you'd expect.
Turnaround for a straightforward reprint is usually days. Parts with no sample and no drawings take longer, because the model has to be reconstructed from photographs and measurements.
Find the part number first
Most interior parts carry a moulded number on the reverse. On VW-group cars, that's the string that starts with the model group — write it down before ordering anything, because it makes both searching and quoting faster.
Can't find a part for your car?
If it's a non-structural plastic or nylon part and you have a sample or a good reference photo, we can almost always recreate it. Send us the details and we'll quote it.
Some parts are already modelled and ready to ship — browse the shop by brand, including Volkswagen, BMW, Audi and Alfa Romeo, or see the whole catalogue in the store.
For a worked example of a full interior refresh, read Restoring a Golf MK2. If you're wondering which material we'd choose for your part, start with 3D printing materials 101.
SHIPS 3–5 DAYS
