Parts for old machinery and equipment with no spares
When the maker no longer exists or the machine is thirty years old: which parts get reproduced, how to document them, and why printed stock pays.
An industrial machine from the nineties can be producing perfectly and standing idle because a plastic cam broke. The maker has closed, been bought by another group, or simply tells you the series was discontinued in 2003. Replacing the machine costs tens of thousands. The part costs a modelling job and a print.
It is a different job from the domestic one, in three concrete ways: the cost of downtime outweighs the cost of the part, there is almost never any documentation, and the part will be needed again.
What reproduces well
- Low-load gears and pinions, cams and eccentrics in auxiliary mechanisms.
- Guides, slides, bushes and rollers that something moves or rolls along.
- Pushers, dividers and format parts on packaging and handling lines.
- Sensor, limit-switch and cable brackets, which break or go missing at every service.
- Knobs, levers, handwheels and grips.
- Covers, control housings, trim and non-structural protectors.
- TPU stops, dampers and seals, replacing rubber nobody supplies any more.
The limits, plainly
We do not replace metal parts that carry load, nor anything under pressure, nor safety guards or interlocks whose job is to stop somebody being injured. Nor gears transmitting torque continuously: they wear, and a stoppage caused by a part that failed after three months is worse than the original one. When the right part is metal, we say so — and do something else useful instead: print the model to prove the geometry before commissioning the machining.
Document once, repeat forever
The first time you pay for the modelling. After that the part exists as a file and repeating it is printing alone: give us the order reference and the quantity, and it comes out as it did the first time. For a workshop with several old machines, that gradually turns a recurring problem into an in-house spares catalogue that no longer depends on anybody still making them.
The machine’s maker no longer exists. Can you still make the part?
Yes. In these cases there are never drawings, so we work from the broken part, from a good one on an identical machine, or from the housing it fits into. The maker having vanished is the usual reason for the job, not an obstacle.
Will you sign an NDA?
Yes, without argument. Files you send are not shared, not published and not reused; they are kept while needed to produce the order and handle a claim, and deleted sooner on request.
How many spares should we order for a machine?
If the part has failed once, it will fail again. Keeping two or three on the shelf costs little more than one thanks to the volume discount, and the second time the machine does not stop and wait. It is the case where printed stock pays for itself.
Can you improve the part rather than copying it exactly?
It is one of the best reasons to do it. If the part always breaks in the same place, that area gets reinforced, the edge where the crack starts gets a radius, or the material changes to a better-suited one. What does not get touched is the geometry that mates with the rest of the machine.