more futile dino spider 2.4 resto help please!

so i've got my grubby mitts on a 2.4 grille for the car, but as you can see from the miserable pics, it's a little wavy in sections...it's made out of plastic..does anyone have any suggestions on how to straighten the wavy bits? the horizontal strips don't separate from the grille-it's all moulded as one piece....
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Probably easier to remake in metal. What you have here is plastic that has taken its natural state. Even if you could get it straight again, most likely with heat it would just come back.

My suggestion is have a metal shop make a new one and be done with it.

 

Contact the Harrington group and speak to Nathan, he owns a company in Vietnam that makes hundreads of diffrent bumpers and grills. I was very impressed by the quality, not your typical Chinese stuff. Nathen may already be in the process of making these, if not I could see them being interested. Any company that makes parts for OSI 20MT S cars is going to welcome a Fiat Dino grill.

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hmm..that might make the most sense...although i'm also thinking about a 3d scan, then have it printed....

what do you think it would cost to do one out of metal?

 

Rough guess.. a few hundred at the right metal shop. It can be scanned and the parts cut by waterjet. Then, just welded together and painted.

Luckily you have the original part to work from.

The good part is that it will look better than plastic and you'll never have the problem again.

You could try 3D printing but it looks rather large for that process. We have several 3D printers we use in China but none are even close to that size. And, the material for 3D printing will be too low a temperature and will have to used as a mold for something stronger or glass reinforced.

My suggestion: Metal. Luckily it's made of easy flat shapes.

 

A few hundred? good luck on that, shop time is usually 100 plus per hour You could laser cut them but the piece does not separate so scanning them is not possible. Then your back to cut and fit. Can a lot of shops build that, yes, but it will eat shop time. Then there is the plating. I think SS is the way to go.

 

Depends on where you take it. Take it to a body shop -- yes, a lot more. Take it to a metal fab place and it's a lot cheaper.

Scan it and cut it on a waterjet, and weld it into shape. Not really a biggie. That piece can easily be scanned today. They even have 3D photo reference scanning today for large pieces.

Why plate it? It's black plastic? Geez you guys need to watch Mike and Edd more on the Velocity Channel.

 

Wonder if you could squeeze a U-channel on the back side to straighten them up and keep them straight. Sort of a stiffener. Paint the channel black and you probably wouldn't notice it at all. Not much to lose trying it.

 

Do metal fab shops have scanning facilities, generally speaking? Can you guys recommend one near NYC?

Thanks again for all this help!

 

I thought it had chrome front edges? If it's just black plastic then you could use all sorts of material.

Any laser cutting shop should have a scanner, not sure about the 3 D. Maybe you could cut it up and lay the pieces out to be scanned. You would loose the grill but have the data needed to build as many grills as you want.

If they do scan it keep copies of the files and other owners can have grills made too!