With over 25 years of experience as an automotive and aeronautical engineer, Patrick Gaspard knows a thing or two about how vehicles work. After years of industry work, he founded R3D – an engineering and 3D printing service provider. In early 2021, automotive powerhouse Stellantis posted a bid for the design and manufacture of aftermarket components for 400 police cars for the French Gendarmerie. The request was to outfit the Peugeot 3008 Gendarmerie with nine individual brackets that would fixture various, expensive radio and computer components securely in place. The parts needed to be strong enough to secure the heavy electronics in both the driver compartment and in the trunk of the vehicle, even in extreme driving scenarios. On top of the required part performance, the vendor would have only three months to turn around 7200 components (18 individual components for each of the 400 vehicles). Not a lot of time when you consider these parts had to be custom designed from scratch.