As an engineer or industrial designer, you’re probably very skilled at creating the custom parts that your company or factory needs to 3D print, whether they’re unique fixtures or standard tools. But to save time and not reinvent the wheel – or wing nut – there’s a wide range of digital files for mechanical parts, industrial hardware, and factory guides online to fit your purpose.
Well-known part manufacturers (Schneider Electric, HPS Intl, World Wide Fittings, etc.) routinely make available digital models for you to design around. Some files are available in their native AutoCAD, SolidWorks, or Rhino formats that you can convert to STL for easy 3D printing or easy customization. There’s also a growing number of user communities where engineers and industrial designers offer up their own designs (in CAD or STL). Just think of the thousands of common parts and hardware, tools, jigs, and fixtures you use at your business that you could print instead of order, saving the minimums, the shipping, the wait, and the money.
However, despite the fact that certifiably accurate digital files of standard tools and hardware are increasingly available online, it doesn’t mean you can just print out a dozen door hinges or pipe fittings from any downloaded file.
Companies, such as part manufacturer McMaster-Carr, provide digital files of their parts so that you can incorporate them into your CAD design to evaluate if their parts will work for your purpose or for designing your 3D printable part around their standard part.
“You shall not use the CAD Models to engage in 3D printing or other fabrication of the objects depicted in the CAD Models for any other purpose,” the McMaster-Carr CAD file license agreement states, which seems fair. Plus, the CAD files are accurate up to a point. Often, you’ll find the provided CAD files may lack technical information, or the dimensions and other specifications may vary due to tolerances associated with the manufacturing process.
However, these files are still incredibly useful. Perhaps you’re designing to 3D print a fixture to hold a standard part or parts to work with a particular branded component. These files ensure your designs will fit with a minimum of prototyping and iterations.
Digital Part Warehouses
If you’re looking to share your company’s designs rather than download others, several 3D Model Sites provide custom digital warehouses. Engineers that you give access to can simply download a part and manufacture it to your exact specifications. These digital part warehouses are rapidly replacing spare part inventories.
Instead of physical storage buildings, digital warehouses are cloud-based repositories of the electronic files companies need to 3D print parts, anywhere, anytime. From automotive spare parts to polymer eyeglass frames to tools and appliance accessories, digital warehouses save money, space, time, and the environment. More manufacturers of all kinds are turning to this method of part storage, which makes digital models more popular than ever.
To learn more about the advantages of digital warehouses and how you can set up your own digital warehouse with software or a service, check out the guide linked below:
Top Sites for Mechanical Models & Digital Files
Here, we explore the growing range of sites offering digital files for mechanical and industrial parts, and we distinguish between the ones offering files you can print and the ones with files you can just design with.
You’ll find technical specs and plans directly from manufacturers, and several sites also feature parts by their standards categorization so you can search by DIN, ISO, and RS number, among others.
McMaster-Carr
The name McMaster-Carr is undoubtedly familiar to anyone with engineering training. More than 100 years old, McMaster-Carr Supply Company has outfitted factories and businesses across the US with all the nuts, bolts, hinges, and fixtures they could ever want. Today, not to be relegated to the past, McMaster-Carr’s website is a link-rich easy-to-use interface of more than half a million product offerings.
Once you find a part on their site that you need, it’s likely to include an attached CAD model. This is ideal for incorporating into your product design and ensuring that, for example, standard parts are accommodated. McMaster-Carr offers a SolidWorks plugin enabling you to import part CAD files directly into your SolidWorks design environment.
- File formats: 2D, SolidWorks, IGES, SAT, SAT, STEP, PDF
- Uses: Design only
3D Content Central
3D ContentCentral is a free service for locating, configuring, downloading, and even requesting a vast range of 3D files for parts and assemblies. It’s run by Dassault Systèmes, the makers of SolidWorks.
The beauty of this platform is that it houses CAD models from both known brands and those made by its community of more than two million CAD users. This distinction can help you determine whether or not you’ll have permission to actually 3D print the part since files from the suppliers are likely to be for design only, but those shared from contributors are most often free to edit and print.
Another great feature of the community contributors is that they receive star ratings and comments from other users, so you’ll know if others have successfully printed the part. You can even filter your search results by highest rating.
Like, TraceParts, this site incorporates the 3D file offerings from thousands of branded manufacturers, including Toshiba, Beco Manufacturing, Bosch, and Honeywell. If your company would like to offer its parts on the platform, you can get 1GB of free space, while more space and extra features come with a monthly subscription.
Create a free account to access all of the 3D files.
- File formats: STL, CAD
- Uses: Design, Prototype, 3D Printing
PartSupply
PartSupply is another massive platform from Dassault Systèmes, the maker of Solidworks. It provides access to a free global ecosystem of qualified industrial parts, their 3D models, and a complete set of information for designers, manufacturing engineers, and sourcing managers.
Boasting more than 60 million qualified components and part configurations from more than 1,000 known part suppliers; if you can’t find it here, you can’t find it anywhere. The site’s search function is relatively robust, featuring a variety of search perimeters (semantic, multi-criteria, similarity, compare, standard number, etc.), which is essential when you offer so many parts, but it works best if you know exactly what you’re looking for.
As with 3D Content Central, PartSupply is integrated directly within Solidworks and Catia, enabling you to search and seamlessly insert components into your designs. In Solidworks, click on “free tools,” then download the “3DExperience MarketPlace for SW” add-in.
Parts from suppliers, such as Schneider Electrics, EAO, FCI, RS Components, Skf, Würth Elektronik, and many more, offer files for download in STEP, Solidworks, Catia, and many more formats. These are not ready-to-print files and are instead intended for design and part verification only.
- File formats: All
- Uses: Design
TraceParts
TraceParts relaunched last year as a completely new platform for 3D printing professionals and rapid prototyping experts with a more intuitive interface, a modernized design, and a wealth of new features. The new version has an easier-to-use and more consistent navigation, while the interface automatically adapts to the size and resolution of the screen used.
The site basically takes the digital part catalogs of hundreds of suppliers and incorporates them into one huge searchable database. Designers and engineers registered on the TraceParts.com CAD-content platform can access and download more than 107 million free 3D models, 2D drawings, and CAD files from part makers around the world. In 2023, the platform added part collections from AutomationDirect, Schneider Electric, HPS Int’l, Hirose Electric, and others.
So if you’re looking specifically for the CAD file for an ABB 6 axis robot, it’s there for download in a wide range of formats. Or maybe your Siemens pushbutton broke and you need a new one. You’ll find the part there.
One of the advantages of this database is its ease of use and, more important, it usually doesn’t link you off to the original manufacturer’s site for CAD files, they’re downloadable right at TraceParts.
Search is by item, brand, standards organization, standards number, or category. Once a part catches your eye, click on it, and you’ll see 3D renders, manufacturer names, and part numbers. Plus, with a list of chosen software packages to choose from—including SolidWorks, Creo, Fusion 360, AutoCAD—you can be sure your model will be compatible with what you’re working with.
To get started with TraceParts, you’ll need to create a free account. Can you 3D print them? Unfortunately, the site is unclear on this point, but it does make clear that the geometrical data of most parts are “simplified” meaning that you often can’t see the internal design of complex parts. From a designers’ point of view, this makes the CAD files lighter to use and quicker to download, so you’ll still have all the information you really need to evaluate the components for the the project you’re designing.
Our best guess is that editing the CAD files to 3D print for prototype purposes only should be okay, but it’s always best to check with the part manufacturer.
- File formats: All
- Uses: Design, Prototype
PartSolutions
Cadenas is a software developer for digital product catalogs for component manufacturers that also offers an online 3D CAD catalog called Partsolutions. Unlike the open databases of CAD files, this is a piece of software that your company can use to integrate your internal CAD library and hundreds of external CAD catalogs from your company’s preferred suppliers.
Engineers waste on average 70% of their time on searching, configuring and unnecessarily recreating new components, Cadenas says, which “adds up to be thousands of work hours a year being wasted on non-constructive activities that have no monetary value.” Saving time and money is the driving force behind Partsolutions, which offers 3D shape search and attribute search functions to help you find CAD data from part suppliers from within your CAD software.
Partsolutions gives engineers direct access to more than 800 manufacturer-certified CAD catalogs, including Festo, Misumi, Parker, and Eaton. It integrates with SolidEdge, SiemensNX, CATIA, SolidWorks, Creo, Autodesk Inventor, and others.
- File formats: All
- Uses: Design, Prototype
Autodesk Online Gallery
If you’re an Autodesk software user, you’re probably already aware of the company’s massive file and model repository. Under the “mechanical engineering” section, you’ll find a wide range of simple elements all the way to turbine engines.
As of this publishing, Autodesk has yet to debut its update community gallery, teased in a Dec. 2022 blog post by the company. But the old version is still accessible.
The community gallery gives designers a way to not only showcase their projects – including drawings, models, renderings, and videos – with the community but also like, share, and save projects that inspire.
With more than 18,323 models to look at and download, there’s plenty of inspiration to be found. When it comes to mechanical files, there’s a bit more inspiration than downloadable files, but there are some gems to be found.
The gallery has a wide selection of filters to use to refine your search, including by industry (civil infrastructure), category (mechanical engineering, product design, electronics) and CAD (Fusion 360, AutoCAD, Inventor).
To start your journey, register a free account with Autodesk.
- File formats: Fusion 360, AutoCAD Mechanical, and other Autodesk products
- Uses: Design, Prototype, 3D Printing
Thingiverse
If you’ve 3D printed anything, you probably already know about Thingiverse. Yes, you could say it’s mostly for hobbyists, but it is the single biggest content repository for 3D printer models on the internet, so it has a decent amount of mechanical parts. It is now operated by UltiMaker after the MakerBot and Ultimaker merger.
Among the headphone stands and Star Wars figurines, there’s a sizable collection of wing nuts, bearings, hole diameter gauges, extension pole threads, and other handy tools. Once you are logged in, you can share tagged 3D printer models in a personal collection.
Files on Thingiverse are made and shared by designers so it’s a printer-beware situation as far as technical accuracy goes, but, on the other hand, you are welcome to print with them at will.
- File formats: STL
- Uses: Design, Prototype, 3D Printing
Würth Industry North America
Würth Industry North America is a leading industrial distributor of supply chain solutions for fasteners, tooling, and industrial supplies offers nearly 60,000 digital part files in its Würth CADalog, its online CAD database. Categories of models include bolts, nuts, and washers, and six new categories were created and updated with new parts: rings, pins, rivets, keys, rods, and studs. The nine main categories are further organized into several dozen subcategories to streamline search and navigation. Files can be downloaded as JPEG, STEP, VRLM, or a list of other formats, but not STL or 3MF for direct 3D printing.
- File formats: All
- Uses: Design
CGTrader
CGTrader is a 3D model marketplace for VR/AR and the professional 3D designer community. The self-service marketplace showcases more than a million 3D models that are mostly focused on hobbyists but, again, if you look, you may just find that perfect CAD or STL file for the part you need.
Take, for example, this collection of pipe clamps show above. The designer, who has a five-star rating on the site, is making this collection available in Autodesk 3ds Max file format for $17.50.
One of the stand-out features of CGTrader is its designer-for-hire marketplace where you can post a project and have the site members bid on it.
- File formats: STL, CAD
- Uses: Design, Prototype, 3D Printing
MyMiniFactory
Although MyMiniFactory has a strong emphasis on gaming and geek culture, its “spare part” section houses a collection of shop-vac nozzles, dishwasher basket wheels, refrigerator door handles, and all sorts of useful odds and ends. The site offers free and paid 3D printer files made by professional designers so there’s an expectation that they’ve been quality tested. The files also often come with printing tips, including the best materials and print speed.
- File formats: STL
- Uses: Design, Prototype, 3D Printing
Cults
Cults is another 3D printer file marketplace mostly for hobbyists, but if you’re looking for a quick, free, standard part file, check out their offering under the “tool” tab. The standard of Cults’ 320,000-plus 3D printer models is usually high, with the equally impressive presentation a big draw. According to the company, more than 50% of the files are free downloads.
Users can follow their favorite designers or engineer or get instant updates when a new creation is posted.
- File formats: STL
- Uses: Design, Prototype, 3D Printing
Lead image source: Walking Quadruped Robot DIY by Yunus Zenichowski on the GrabCAD community.
License: The text of "Mechanical 3D Prints: Best 3D File Sites for Engineers" by All3DP Pro is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.