Jay Leno Replaces Rare Car Parts Using 3D Printer

While he may have ceded the “Tonight Show” to Conan O’Brien, Jay Leno will never give up his mantle of being one of the most impressive celebrity car enthusiasts.

How impressive, you ask?

Leno creates his own spare parts for rare, old cars using a 3D printer. He described the process for Popular Mechanics, but here’s the gist of how it works: Leno scans the old part using a NextEngine 3D Scanner, which takes about 20 minutes at a resolution of 160,000 dots per inch.

This creates a 3D model, which he can then print in plastic with a Dimension 3D Printer in roughly three hours. At that point, he can use the plastic model to create a mold that can be used to build the car piece in metal.

Pretty nifty, right? He should put that much time and effort into his monologue.

Jay Leno’s 3D Printer Replaces Rusty Old Parts (Popular Mechanics via Gizmodo)

Comments

The man has obviously missed his vocation ! He should be in a shed somewhere in overalls instead of wasting his time hosting a popular talk show :)...

Leno has a passion for old vehicles of all kinds,and believes they should be maintained properly and driven as much as possible.In the old car hobby he is a God,and I for one am glad to see a wealthy celebrity go to the extremes he does to bring old,historical iron back to showroom shape.Tim Allen is a car nut too.Most celebrities just buy a new car and crash it without thought (Paris Hilton...etc).

3d scanning from Surfdev, a specialist scanning service performed by a reverse engineering company.

wow .it is a great invention.

Chrysler for one and probably everybody else was doing this years ago. This is not new.