Custom Plastic Brackets

Brackets are the most ordinary thing in the world right up until you need one that does not exist. The hole spacing is wrong, the angle is not 90 degrees, it has to clear a pipe, the original snapped and the appliance is out of production. At that point your options are to bodge it, fabricate it in metal, or have one printed.

Why a printed bracket is often the right call

• It fits your actual situation. Not the nearest thing on the shelf. Exact hole centres, exact angle, exact clearances.
• It is cheap for one. No tooling, no minimum quantity. The price comes from material and print time — see how pricing works.
• It is quick. Days, not weeks.
• Awkward shapes are free. A bracket that steps around an obstruction, or has a curved face to match a tube, costs no more to print than a flat one. In metal, that shape is the expensive part.
• You can have spares. Printing a second while the machine is set up costs little.

Choosing a material

• PETG — the default. Tough, does not go brittle, copes with damp and mild outdoor use. Right for most brackets.
• PLA — fine for light indoor duty: a cable bracket, a sign, a shelf support for something light. Cheap and stiff, but brittle and it softens in heat. Never use it in a car or a conservatory.
• ASA — outdoors in the sun, or anywhere warm. Holds up where PETG eventually yellows.
• Nylon or nylon-CF — when the bracket is genuinely working hard, or takes repeated knocks.

Our material comparison covers the trade-offs.

Making it strong enough

The strength of a printed bracket comes down to design more than material:

• Fillet the inside corner. A sharp internal corner where the two arms meet is a stress raiser and a crack starter. A generous radius there is the single best change you can make.
• Add a gusset. A triangular web between the arms stops the bracket folding. It costs a few grams.
• Thickness beats infill. Stiffness rises sharply with thickness. Going from 3 mm to 5 mm of wall does far more than turning the infill up.
• Orientation. We print brackets so the layers run along the load, not across the joint. A bracket printed the wrong way up can snap at the corner under a load it should shrug off. There is more in our guide to how strong printed parts are.
• Spread the fixings. Two screws close together let the bracket pivot. Move them apart.
• Use washers. A screw head pulled straight into plastic will sink in over time. A washer spreads the load.
• Let the metal take the thread. Screwing directly into printed plastic works once. If it comes apart regularly, design in a captive nut or a heat-set insert instead.

What to send us

You do not need a CAD model. Most bracket jobs start with:

1. A photo of the space, or the broken original, with a ruler or tape in shot.
2. The overall envelope — how much room the bracket has to live in.
3. Hole positions — diameters and, most importantly, centre-to-centre distances. These are the numbers that decide whether it fits.
4. The angle, if it is not a right angle.
5. What it holds — roughly the weight, and which way it pulls.
6. Where it lives — indoors, outdoors, in a vehicle, near heat.

Our guide on how to measure a bracket walks through the method. If you have the broken part, posting it to us is often easier than measuring it.

If you have a model already, upload it and we will check it for printability before quoting.

When plastic is the wrong material

We will tell you if we think you are asking too much of a printed bracket:

• Anything overhead that could hurt someone if it let go. A heavy TV, a hoist point, a ceiling fitting. Use steel.
• Structural load paths in a vehicle, a building or lifting equipment.
• Sustained heavy load in a hot place. Plastics creep — they slowly deform under a constant load, and heat accelerates it. A bracket that is fine on day one can sag over a summer.
• Long spans holding real weight. A printed bracket resists bending well only over a short arm.

Plenty of brackets are none of those things. Screens, cameras, sensors, cables, boxes, controls, trim panels, light fittings, shelving for modest loads, tools, hobby and model work — all comfortably within what a printed bracket does well.

Not sure which side of the line you are on? Describe the job and we will give you a straight answer.

Get an estimate · see the brackets and mounts service · browse the print library.