Jay Leno has an incredibly large car collection. For some of the older vehicles in his garage, you can’t just go down to a job shop and pick up a spare replacement part. In these instances you’ll have to take it to a machinist to reproduce a new part. This can become cost-prohibitive through the trial and error nature of reverse engineering a part. In order to cut down on the development time and ensure the final part being machined will match the vehicle, Jay and his crew use a NextEngine 3D scanner and Dimension 3D printer to produce functional prototypes they can test fit on the vehicle. [via Elephant Ninja]
If you had a one-off Ferrari engine, you could scan each part and then re-create the entire motor. Right now, we’re scanning a Duesenberg body. It’s a classic example of high tech melding with old tech. There are cars sitting in garages around the country, and they haven’t moved in years for lack of some unobtainable part. Now they can hit the road once more, thanks to this technology.
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