Reverse-Engineered Vent Components

These are four vent parts for S-Cool Service, rebuilt from the client's own samples and then made as a batch. We measured each sample, drew it again in CAD and 3D printed it in PLA. Three of the four match the originals. The fourth, the large vent, was redesigned on request, from a honeycomb grille to straight slats.

The brief

Chen Guan Hu needed copies of four existing vent parts, 30 of each design in white. He also wanted the large vent changed: a marked-up photo showed straight lines across the honeycomb, and a louvre sample followed the next day as a guide for the new slats.

How we made it

The four samples arrived on 22 June. We modelled each one in CAD and checked the key sizes against the parts. The angled louvre is 73.9 mm wide and 30 mm deep, with slats at 45 degrees. The horizontal louvre is 49.8 mm wide and 22 mm deep. The small honeycomb vent is 130 × 65 mm, with 6.6 mm cells and 0.9 mm walls. The large vent became a new design, 198 mm long and 13 mm deep, with 1 mm slats every 8 mm in place of the honeycomb. All four designs were ready and approved on 24 June, two days after the first samples came in.

Each part prints face-down on its flange, so it needs very little support and the side people see stays clean. We printed one prototype of each design in PLA, the client test-fitted them, and the fit was approved on 1 July.

The production run

Production started on 2 July. Each set is one of each design, printed in PLA and left as printed. All 30 white sets were done by 6 July, and 10 more sets in black finished the run on 8 July: 160 parts in all, ready for self-collection.

From the first sample to a finished batch took just over two weeks.

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