3D printers an alternative to vacform kits

[McColm]

From what I have seen in regards to 3D printing,  it seems impressive.  Parts for cars which are very hard to get, are now becoming available using this device.
So if you were to scan a  vacform mould/sheet from Contrail,  Air Waves,  Sanger etc you could get aircraft parts in plastic as an alternative .
This would help me, as I sometimes sand too hard in one place and leave holes .
I  have no idea if this would work or has already been done 

[zenrat]

That could work.  But consider that you would be stealing Contrail, Air Waves or Sanger's intellectual property.

One could also scan a complete injection kit sprue by sprue and print that out.

I would like to be able to scan a 1/25 model car body, customise it (roof chop, sectioning etc) using CAD and then print it out.  It would avoid much PSR.

[PR19_Kit]

My mate Pete, him who's a whizz with the micro-lathe with which he modified the wheels for my brother's Caterham Seven car kit, has a couple of 3D printers.

Seeing the results from his 3D machines in recent weeks suggests to me that the days of PSR and practicing one's putty-foo are not yet dead. Even with the most fine settings the resulting 'mouldings' still come out with ridges all the way round the model and you either have to file them smooth or PSR them out of existence.

And the finer the settings, and thus minimising the size of the ridges, the longer it takes to print the model, sometimes whole DAYS! 

I don't see 3D printing taking over the vacforming or injection moulding scene just yet.

[Hobbes]

At the moment it's cheaper to buy a new vacform kit than to 3D print a few parts. On my VC-10 Superb, the printed engines cost ~ € 25. 

3D scanning is coming along, but it usually requires some fiddling with the resulting data to get a usable print. Airfix uses the scanning data just as a reference, and create the drawings from scratch.

I recently found an article on 3D scanning that shows off some recent developments, I haven't had a chance to try it out myself yet.

[NARSES2]

Apart from the intellectual copy write issue, which is a serious issue for many reasons, the cost would be the main limiting factor, at the moment anyway.

[Gondor]

If your sanding holes in a vac-form kit then you can use the excess plastic from the sheets to either fill the holes you make of to use as backing for filling the holes with putty.

Gondor

[McColm]

Thanks for all your comments