Holding shelves full of spare parts ties up money and warehouse space, and there is a particular frustration in the fact that the one part you urgently need always seems to be the one that has just run out. SLS offers a genuinely different model, one where spare parts live as digital files and are printed only at the moment they are actually needed, so the cash that would have sat in dead stock stays in the business.
For obsolete components, low volume spares or parts that are simply hard to source any more, this on demand approach can keep valuable equipment running long after the original supply chain has dried up completely. We support exactly this kind of work through our Perth MJF & SLS printing service for businesses that cannot afford downtime.
A digital warehouse
Once a part has been modelled, it can be reprinted at any time in the future without minimum order quantities and without any tooling to maintain. That effectively turns a physical inventory into a digital one, where you store compact files on a drive rather than boxes on shelves, and print to order whenever a part wears out or breaks. A single sensible folder structure can hold the spares for an entire fleet of machines.
This model works especially well for older machinery where the original supplier has long since stopped stocking the part, and where the alternative would be scrapping an otherwise perfectly good machine for the want of a single small component.
Recreating parts that lack drawings
When no digital model exists for a part, which is very common for older equipment, we can often recreate one from a physical sample using 3D scanning and photogrammetry and then rebuild a clean, accurate, printable model in CAD. That gives you a reliable file you can return to for every future reprint. We keep the recreated model and a record of its key features so that a second or third reprint years later comes out identical to the first.
Even worn or partly broken originals can usually be reverse engineered successfully, as long as enough of the original geometry survives for us to measure and reconstruct the intended shape with confidence.
Building the library
The most value comes from being prepared before a breakdown rather than scrambling after one. A sensible first step is to identify the handful of parts that most often fail or that would halt a line if they broke, then model or scan those while a good sample still exists. Each file can be stored with its material, finish and any critical dimensions noted, so a reprint is a single quick instruction rather than a fresh investigation.
Over time the library grows into a genuine asset, and because the parts are printed only when needed there is no risk of stock becoming obsolete on the shelf as designs change or machines are retired. A small upfront investment in scanning and modelling a critical spare pays for itself the first time it saves a machine from sitting idle while a replacement is hunted down.
Durable replacements
SLS nylon is more than tough enough for a great many real spare parts, from clips, housings and covers to gears, rollers and brackets, so the printed replacement often performs every bit as well as the original injection moulded item did. For spares that genuinely need to be metal, we can advise on CNC machining instead.
undefined Where wear is the issue, we can even tweak the design slightly, adding a fillet or thickening a thin section, so the reprinted part outlasts the original.
- Store spares as files and print only when they are needed.
- Keep obsolete machines running long after parts are discontinued.
- Recreate missing models from a sample by scanning and CAD.
- Note material, finish and key dimensions with each file.
- Choose CNC machining for spares that must be metal.