SILVADES
One-person design studio. Custom 3D-printed parts for cars the catalog forgot, and the camera work that shows them. Flagship material: PA6-GF nylon.
A Volvo.
A void in the catalog.
SILVADES started in a garage, looking at a Volvo T6 engine bay the parts catalog had given up on: a turbo inline-six, a tight bay, and a restrictive stock intake.
The options were universal cones, aluminum kits that never fit right, or nothing. So I measured everything, modeled the bay in CAD, printed prototypes overnight, and ran them under the hood until the geometry settled.
A one-off became a registered LLC, a TikTok shop, and a part for T6 owners who wanted one designed for their car by someone who owns one. The intake is now on its fifth design revision.
The same process now builds custom parts for other cars, and the camera that documents the work shoots for clients too.
The name: Silva, Latin for the wild place. Des, for design. A wild place, made deliberate.
One designer.
Every stage.
I'm Ben Hoffman. I've been modeling parts in CAD for seven years, mostly in Creo, and I'm a student at Illinois Central College, working toward a transfer degree and a certificate in computer-aided mechanical drafting.
I also repair electronics at the board level and hold an FAA Part 107 commercial drone certificate. SilvaDes is where all of it gets used: the measuring, the CAD, the printing, the fit check on the car, and the photos and video that show the finished part.
The shop runs around a full class schedule, which is why visits are by appointment only.
What the shop does.
Three lines of work, one person on all of them.
The part that started it.
PA6-GF cold air intake for T6 models running MAF OE #LR012073. Sold as a finished part or a print file, with local install by appointment. See the intake →
One-offs and discontinued parts.
Measured or scanned, modeled in CAD, printed in the right material and fit-checked before handover. Quoted per part. Start a part →
Cars, builds and businesses.
Automotive and business photo and video, sold as set packages. Every build on this site was shot in-house. See packages →
PA6-GF.
The material that earned the bay.
PA6-GF is nylon 6 reinforced with chopped glass fiber, the same material family carmakers mold under-hood parts from. It is what the T6 intake landed on after other materials failed a Midwest summer under the hood.
PA6-GF is the flagship, not the only filament. Other hot or tough parts get carbon-fiber nylon or polycarbonate; exterior and interior parts get ASA, PETG or ABS; flexible parts get TPU. A printed part is weaker across its layers than a molded one, so I design around that: thicker walls, loads run along the layers, metal inserts where threads matter.
Every part is printed in-house and finished by hand. What I won't print: anything in the exhaust or turbo heat path, and anything in steering, suspension or brakes.
From CAD to combustion bay.
Every part runs the same six stages, and one person sees it at every stage.
Three rules.
They apply to every part and every order.
If it's not measured, it's not real.
Every dimension traces to a CAD model that has been checked on a real car. I hold a release before I guess at a clearance.
One hand on every part.
SILVADES is one designer, one workshop, one queue. The person who hands over your part is the person who designed, printed and tested it.
No call center. No tier-one.
You email or text, the designer answers. If a part is defective, the same person fixes it under the 90-day limited warranty.
One workshop.
One operator.
Direct line.
The workshop is in Washington, Illinois. The build videos on TikTok, Instagram, YouTube and Facebook are documentation: CAD on the screen, the print, the bench work, then the part on a car. If you can't show it, you didn't build it.
More of that work, from CAD renders to finished parts, is in the Design & Build Lab.
What's next.
What is shipping now and where the shop is headed.
Volvo T6 / Cold Air Intake v5
Full PA6-GF intake pipe for any T6 running MAF OE #LR012073. Buy the printed part or the print-it-yourself file in the store; local install by appointment.
Gauge Pods / More Cars
Branching out past the T6: gauge pods, dash panels and other parts for more cars. Same process: measured, modeled, test-fit.
More Aerial / Drone Work
More FAA Part 107 drone photo and video: automotive, real estate, events and site work across central Illinois.
Ready when your bay is.
The store is open, custom parts are quoted per part, shop visits are by appointment only, and every message is read by the person who designed the part.