Ah nuts, I lost my automobile jack again. What will I do? Well, why not 3D print a new one?

Uploaded to Thingiverse earlier this week, this design allows you to 3D print a fully functional automobile jack — provided your build platform is large enough. It’s actually a bit of a promo for the Cheetah 2, a massive modular 3D printer by [Hans Fouche]. earlier this year we shared his 3D printed lawn mower; which spoiler, also works.

The neat thing about the Cheetah 2 is that it doesn’t use filament. It actually processes plastic pellets right inside the hot end, allowing for much cheaper material — typically dollars on the kilogram, as opposed to the $30+/kg we’re all used to being gouged on. Of course, you could also make your own filament.

It’s an impressive engineering feat to design a small plastic component like this to take the load of a vehicle, though to be fair, it’s not completely 3D printed. It does use an M12 threaded rod to provide the mechanical advantage required to lift the automobile by hand. but for ABS plastic holding it all together, it’s still quite astounding.

We’d love to see how much deflection the jack sees during operation — but unfortunately there’s no video of it in action.

Oh and it only took 3 hours to print.