Land Rover Forums - Land Rover Enthusiast Forum - 3D-Printed Seat Kickplate Cover

Normally I wouldn't do this, but I'm particularly proud of how this one came out, so I have to brag. Both of my front seat kickplate covers were cracked, one clean in half, so I decided to see what I could do with my 3d printer. My printer was large enough to create the plate itself monolith, flat on the build plate with an advantageous fiber orientation. Even the strongest printing materials can fail easily if parts are stressed on the wrong axis in relation to the fiber orientation. The hooks and hold-off pins that catch the seat bustle were printed separately, in their own orientation to prevent stress fractures, and epoxied to the main plate afterwards.The front and sides of the assembly were hand-sanded to 2000-grit, leaving the back of the plate in the raw printed condition (just cause). The whole thing was then cleaned thoroughly and given several coats of paint and clear coat. A little post-finish sanding was required on the hole for the latch (original piece), but then it slipped right into place and the thing works like a charm. It's also much more flexible than the original piece. It was originally intended to be a prototype, just to see if the idea would work, so it was only printed out of PLA, but the whole process took so much longer than I intended that I really don't want to do it again, so we'll see how long this lasts. I also considered selling them, but the cost to the customer would be prohibitive to make it worth my time (and I'm pretty sure you can get replacements from AB for like $50...). All in all, just thought I'd share because it did come out nicely, and I just think it's a neat example of practical uses for 3d printing.