If you don’t know what a “Bugaboo pram” is then you’re lucky. If you do, you’ll realize that these strollers are not only wildly expensive to buy but wildly expensive to fix. We’ve gone through a few strollers – a Bugaboo included – over the years and we’ve had to fix a few here and there. Although there are folks who want to help DIYers, parts and service can reach $250 or more. Now, however, you can print your own replacement parts for a few dollars.

This Instructable describes out one Dad built his own metal parts by measuring the broken pieces and printing them at Shapeways. He talked to Geekdad about his experiences:

Duann Scott: I was looking for a way to get our Bugaboo stroller repaired but found the service available slow and expensive so I took things into my own hands, googled and found the Bugaboo Repair Guy was helping people to repair their stroller, offering instructions and parts fairly cheap. I followed his instructions but the part that was broken on mine he did not have parts for so I decided to make my own.

3D Modeling the part in CAD took me about 5 minutes, the hardest part was measuring the broken part as there is an angled straight off of a curved section so getting the right angle was kinda tricky but I did the old trick of laying my screen on its back, making the image 1:1 and putting the broken part on top to check. Perhaps not best practice in engineering firms but it worked.

Nerd Dads FTW.