Intake Ducts & Plenums
Complex internal shapes printed as one piece in PA12 or glass-filled nylon, with smooth interior walls and no support marks inside the flow path.
INDUSTRY · AUTOMOTIVE & MOTORSPORT
Automotive & Motorsport Parts — Beyond the OEM Tooling Cycle
The intake duct that has to be reshaped before the next test. The interior trim for a build of six. The bracket for an engine whose supplier never made one. Automotive work is mostly small quantities with a hard date attached, which is precisely the shape of job that tooling cannot serve.
±0.3 mmNylon tolerance
±0.2 mmMetal tolerance
3–5 daysNylon lead time
1 pcMinimum order
OVERVIEW
Why this sector prints
Automotive and motorsport work is dominated by a mismatch: the quantities are tiny and the deadlines are absolute. A race team needs a revised duct before a test that is already booked. A restorer needs one bracket for a car built in 1973 and cannot find it anywhere. An EV startup needs twelve of an enclosure for a prototype fleet, and the injection tool is eight weeks and a large sum of money away. In every one of those cases there is no tooling, no minimum order and no volume to amortise anything — which is exactly the gap additive manufacturing fills.
SLS nylon does most of the heavy lifting here, and it is not a compromise. An intake duct, a plenum or a trim panel printed in PA12 is a functional part: it holds its shape, it takes a clamp, it does not care that the internal geometry is complex, and it needs no support structure to leave marks inside a duct where you least want them. Glass-filled nylon takes the stiffness further for parts that must not flex. Where the part must be metal — a bracket carrying real load, a thermal component, an exhaust-adjacent shield — SLM delivers it in aluminium or titanium, and it can be topology-optimised in a way a machined billet cannot match.
What we would not claim is that this replaces production processes. Twenty pieces is a reasonable printed order; two thousand is not, and at that point the right move is to print the prototype, prove the design, and cut a tool. We will happily print the twelve you need now and tell you at what volume you should stop coming back to us.
WHAT WE PRINT
What We Print for Vehicles
The recurring jobs. Most of them are one-offs or small batches, and most of them are needed for a date rather than a price.
Interior Trim & Switch Housings
Low-volume trim panels, bezels, vents and housings for builds of a handful — finished and colour-matched rather than left as raw prints.
Wind-Tunnel & Aero Models
Scaled bodywork and ducting models with smooth surfaces and controlled geometry, for teams that test more shapes than they can machine.
Lightweight Brackets & Mounts
Topology-optimised brackets in aluminium or titanium that carry the same load at a fraction of the mass of a fabricated equivalent.
Thermal & Cooling Parts
Cold plates, heat sinks and ducted cooling hardware in aluminium or copper, with internal geometries that a drilled or folded part cannot offer.
Obsolete & Custom Spares
A discontinued clip, a discontinued cover, a bracket that was never made for this variant — measured and rebuilt from the original.
Workshop Jigs & Mock-ups
Assembly fixtures, alignment jigs, welding aids and full-size mock-ups for the fabrication shop, in whatever material the job needs.
See the parts gallery for examples across SLM, SLA and SLS, grouped by process.
PROCESS FIT
Which Process We Would Use
Tolerances and lead times are read from the process pages, so they match what the quote engine works to rather than being a second copy.
| Process | Why it fits this sector | Typical tolerance | Typical lead time |
|---|---|---|---|
| SLS Nylon 3D Printing | Ducts, trim, brackets and covers in PA12 nylon. No supports, tough enough to bolt on and use, and the honest default for most automotive work. | ±0.3 mm | 3–5 days |
| SLM Metal 3D Printing | Metal that carries load or heat. Aluminium for lightweight brackets and thermal parts, titanium where strength per gram matters most. | ±0.2 mm | 7–10 days |
| SLA Resin 3D Printing | Wind-tunnel models and visual parts that have to be smooth or transparent, plus master patterns for short-run composite tooling. | ±0.1 mm | 2–4 days |
These are typical values we hold routinely, not absolute limits — send us the drawing and we will confirm what is achievable on your geometry. Compare all processes, or see post-processing & finishing for what happens after the print.
MATERIALS
Materials for Automotive Work
Nylon covers most of the non-structural work. Metal arrives when the part carries load, heat or a safety case.
Nylon PA12
Tough, chemically resistant and dimensionally stable, and it prints with no supports to remove. The default material for functional prototypes, brackets, housings and low-volume end-use parts.
Full material data →Aluminium AlSi10Mg
Low density, useful strength and excellent thermal conductivity. The material for weight-critical brackets, heat sinks and RF housings in automotive, drones and electronics.
Full material data →Titanium Ti-6Al-4V
The reference SLM alloy. Highest strength-to-weight of anything we print, and effectively immune to salt water. The default for robot joints, aerospace brackets and non-implant medical instruments.
Full material data →Copper & Copper Alloys
Up to 100 % IACS electrical conductivity and ~400 W/m·K thermal, in three-dimensional geometry that machining cannot produce. The hardest metal to print — and quoted only after an engineer reviews the part.
Full material data →Anything exhaust-adjacent or continuously hot needs a heat-resistance conversation before it is designed — most standard polymers will not hold up there, and we would rather say so early.
QUALITY
What We Check Before It Goes On a Vehicle
A part that looks right and does not fit costs a test day. These are the checks that decide whether it goes back on the car or back on the bench.
- Interfaces and fastener positions verified against the model, with a dimensional report on request.
- Printed orientation planned so the layer direction does not sit across the load path on a stressed part.
- Bores, threads and sealing faces machined after printing rather than printed and hoped for.
- Painted and trim parts finish-cured before packing, with a colour reference kept on file for a matching second piece.
- Material lot and build parameters recorded per part, so a replacement matches the one it replaces.
HONEST LIMITS
Where We Would Not Use Printing
Motorsport is unforgiving about parts that fail, and we would rather stay on the right side of that. Our honest list.
Strengths
- No tooling, so a one-off or a build of six is economic rather than absurd
- Complex internal geometry prints as one piece, with no supports to remove from inside a duct
- Weight reduction without a tooling cost, so a bracket can be optimised late in a programme
- Obsolete and one-variant-only parts re-made from a sample rather than from a drawing
- Metal, nylon and finishing from one supplier, so a part arrives ready to fit
- Small batches for pilot vehicles, printed while the production tool is still being cut
Limits to know
- Not economic at production volume — above a few hundred pieces, tooling wins
- A printed part is weaker across the layer direction, so load paths must be considered, not assumed
- Nylon is not a high-temperature material — exhaust-adjacent parts need a different route
- Printed surfaces cannot hold a bearing fit or a machined seal without a machining step
- Material properties are close to, but not the same as, a moulded production part
- For safety-critical components, any printed part needs your own validation before it goes on a car
FAQ
Automotive & Motorsports — Common Questions
Can you print a part for a car we are prototyping?
Yes, and it is most of what we do in this sector. A duct, a housing, a bracket or a trim panel printed in PA12 nylon is a functional part you can bolt onto a prototype vehicle and test, not a display model. If the design then changes — and it will — the next version is a new file, not a new tool.
Will a printed intake duct survive on an engine?
If it is not sitting in continuous radiant heat, usually yes: PA12 handles the temperatures an intake sees, and the smooth internal walls are better for flow than a fabricated part with welds inside it. What it will not survive is being close to a manifold or a turbo, where radiant temperature is well beyond any standard polymer. Tell us where the part sits and we will tell you honestly whether it belongs there.
How many pieces can you make before tooling makes more sense?
As a rule of thumb, tens rather than hundreds. Up to a few dozen, printing is usually the cheaper and much faster route, because there is no tool cost to amortise. Past that, the cost per part starts to argue for a tool, and we will tell you when the crossover is rather than printing a thousand pieces because you asked.
Can you match our interior colour?
Yes — painted to a RAL or Pantone reference, or matched to a sample panel you send. On a batch we will spray a coupon for approval before the parts go into the paint queue. Unpainted nylon is a grey-to-black matte finish: it reads as industrial, not as a trim material, so anything visible needs a finish step.
Can you re-make a part that is no longer available?
Often, yes, and it is one of the more satisfying jobs we take. If you have an intact original we measure or scan it and rebuild it as a model; if you have a drawing we work from that. Because it becomes a model rather than a copy, we can also strengthen the feature that failed, which is usually why you need one in the first place.
Do you do wind-tunnel models?
Yes, in SLA. Resin gives you the smoothest surface and the sharpest trailing edges of any process we run, which is what a scaled aero model needs, and it can be printed in sections and joined if the model is large. Tell us the scale, the mounting interface and how many iterations you expect — if it is more than a couple, the model should be built to be re-used rather than re-made.
GET STARTED
Send the Part and the Deadline
A STEP file is ideal, a scan or a photo of the original is fine. Tell us what the part has to do and when it has to be there, and we will tell you which process we would use, what it costs, and if a cheaper route would do the same job.
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