Making things · idea 07 of 52
3D-print replacement parts that manufacturers no longer sell
The clip that broke on a discontinued dishwasher is worth real money to the one person searching for it. Design once, print on demand.
- Who pays you
- Individuals pay you per part through Etsy, eBay or your own site for a printed replacement they can't buy elsewhere. The margin is between a few cents of filament and what a person will pay to not replace an appliance.
- Outcomes
- 0 receipts. Nobody's reported back on this one yet. Receipts open when accounts launch.
How it works
Appliances, cars, furniture and tools have small plastic parts that break and are no longer sold: knobs, clips, brackets, gears, hinges, drawer runners. People search for them by model number. You find these parts by reading repair forums and marketplace requests, model the part in CAD from a broken original, print it in a suitable material, and list it under the product's name and part number. Each part is a tiny business that sells a few units a month for years.
What it actually takes
- A decent printer and the patience to keep it calibrated. A few hundred for a machine that prints reliably in the tougher materials.
- CAD skill sufficient to model mechanical parts from measurements. Free tools are more than enough.
- Callipers, a range of filaments, and a system for small-parcel shipping.
- A catalogue mindset: twenty parts selling three a month beats one part selling sixty.
Where it goes wrong
- Printing decorations. Vases and figurines are a hobby with a saturated market. Functional parts under a model number are where the search traffic is.
- Parts that carry load or heat, printed in the wrong material. Know what PLA can't do.
- Copying a part that's still sold, or that's patented. Discontinued and generic parts only.
- Slow start. Search traffic builds over months; the first sales are trickles.
Published 7 Aug 2026