3D printed 996 headlight washer caps

This is a project I've been working on for the past 3 days. Thought it may be useful to others since it seems to be a bit of a nuisance part based on my searches. Also my first post on rl so apologies if it's not in the right place. I'm decently new to the Porsche world and picked up a 996 turbo about 8 months ago. Recently I had the drivers side headlight washer cap fly off while I accidentally bumped the stalk going about 40mph. Terrible design aside, the replacement was looking like 20$ for an unpainted cap or 70+ for the whole washer assembly :barf:. I'm a software engineer and have done quite a bit of 3d printing so I decided this would be a good opportunity for a project like that. For reference, this is not a show car as much as a canyon carver so I don't care much about perfect looks so much. I iterated on a design about 15 times and eventually came up with something that functions as well as the original, uses the original tabs and mounting, is sturdy enough to stay on(tested up to about 110 so far), and is sleek enough to be painted and look passable (better printer and maybe some more fine-tuning the shape and positioning could keep improving this). It involves a little bit of heat forming and a good deal of time to paint so I would say weighing the value of your time is definitely a good idea. Each washer cover is about 12 cents to print As for the print itself, I'm using a reprap I built (back when that was a viable option for a quality printer) and the pieces were printed in PLA. There are more details about the print itself in the thingiverse link below. --> Here is the final product <-- Including the stl files, scad code, and full instructions for printing, heat forming, paint, and install. I'll attach some photos of the finished product here too. I painted mine in GM galaxy silver since that's what I had left over from my z06. I'll probably reprint and color match the slate grey on the car soon enough. Car is pretty filthy in the photos don't judge Happy to answer q's about the process or help anyone that is trying to print their own. And here's some of the development parts that were printed.

Nice work!

I love 3D printing for this kind of thing. I did something similar with the plastic cap ($30+) that hides the hardtop mounting holes, and ***** for my Becker radio.I definitely understand the design, print, test fit, rinse, repeat part of the process.

Very nice job!

Great effort on the design! Those will need to be made from ABS or nylon though as PLA won't last past the first even slightly sunny day, glass transition temperature is less than 50�. 👍

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Yep! It's certainly a concern. I think my current pieces should hold up on the car for a while though considering I keep it in the garage at home, under an overhang at work, and we are going into the "winter" months here in CA with a little less sun and heat. Paint and clear should also help reflect a bit of radiated heat from the plastic underneath. And the heat forming process also doubles as a bit of annealing so that should help. Ultimately I'll probably print my next set in ABS though. Just a little lazy and don't want to move the printer to the garage quite yet.

Nicely done! I'm a 3D printing enthusiast as well. I've found that a quality PETG holds up well, and is much easier to print than ABS. In fact, I've designed and printed some parts to hold load that are outdoors, in a marine environment 24/7/365 and they've held up admirably for several years. One set is painted and the other is just raw PETG. Painting will definitely help reduce UV damage over time.