For Marc, the maker behind Silver Triple Designs in France, restoring a vintage RC car means getting it running again. What began with replacing broken plastic parts grew into recreating entire cars and developing his own designs. With 3D printing and the Makera Carvera Air, he is making the parts he once had to search for—and finding new possibilities in every repair.
“What I do now is think that there is always a way to replace something and improve it.”
— Marc, Silver Triple Designs
A Broken Car and a Familiar Problem
When Marc was fourteen, he had one RC car kit. When it broke, he sometimes waited months to save enough money for replacement parts.
Around thirty-five years later, RC returned to his life through his son. In 2021, the family’s garden became a place to drive, experiment, and occasionally break things. His son’s first car lasted less than ten minutes before something needed fixing.
This time, Marc had more ways to respond. He had studied industrial engineering before building a career in IT, but his interest in technical drawing and design had never disappeared. With his first 3D printer, he began putting those interests to use.
Vintage cars presented a particular challenge. Replacement parts could be difficult to find, expensive, and fragile with age. For someone who wanted to drive his cars, collecting scarce spares was only a partial answer.
“When I have an RC car, I like to run it. It is not something that I just put on a shelf.”
In 2021, a birthday gift gave him a project: a Nichimo Spirit FF with a chassis broken into several pieces. Its previous owner had spent three years trying to find a replacement chassis.
The car was damaged but sufficiently complete for Marc to measure and model its parts. He learned as he went, combining CAD, 3D printing, and assembly. Eventually, he replaced every plastic part, rebuilding in nylon while retaining the original metal components.
The Metal Parts That Led Him to CNC
As Marc shared his work online under his long-standing nickname, Silver Triple, other enthusiasts encouraged him to go further. If he could recreate so many parts, could he recreate a whole car?
The Hirobo Zerda became his attempt to do just that without using original Hirobo parts. He modeled the car, sourced suitable components where possible, and used 3D printing extensively. Metal transmission shafts, however, required another approach.
Marc initially made them with a handsaw, file, and drill, using 3D-printed guides to hold the stock. Drilling accurately into a round shaft proved especially difficult. Repeated attempts stretched the work over weeks.
At the end, I had the part and I was super happy, but in my mind it was: “Maybe it is time to do something else in another way.”
He wanted those components to remain metal, preserving the character of the original car. But making them by hand had revealed a limit in his workflow—and a reason to consider a desktop CNC machine.
Carvera and Carvera Air began appearing in his social feeds. By early 2025, he was seriously considering CNC and preordered a Carvera Air for his own workshop.
Looking back on the move from manual shaft making to CNC, he says:
“Before ordering the CNC, I was making shafts with a file, a drill, and a handsaw. I took one or two months to make the full set of parts I needed. With this machine, it takes ten minutes. It makes things easier and gives you the capability. There is a learning curve, but it is worth it.”
Learning Before the Machine Arrived
With the Carvera Air still on its way to France, Marc visited Luz’in, his local Fablab. The makerspace already had a Carvera and offered training.
His first experience with a kit-built 3D printer had involved uncertainty, failed prints, and weekends spent seeking help. For CNC, he wanted a more structured start.
For CNC, I thought, “Let’s try to do things in order. Let’s get training first.”
At Luz’in, he learned to think about workholding, machining time, and how a design would actually be made. Sometimes, making a component in separate pieces and assembling them made more sense than removing large amounts of material from one block.
While waiting for his own machine, he used the makerspace’s equipment for projects, including a fiberglass chassis for his ST1 design.
The exchange eventually went both ways. After gaining experience with fourth-axis machining, Marc shared what he had learned with Luz’in, helping the team begin using that capability on their Carvera.
”Each Maker they work with also brings something, and that is the advantage of a Fablab: exchanging with people who do other things generates ideas and shows what is possible.“
Creating His Own Car with the ST1
After recreating vintage RC cars, Marc began developing a car of his own. The ST1 started as a 3D-printed design, giving him room to explore his own ideas beyond the dimensions and construction of an existing model.
When he shared it online, other enthusiasts saw the potential for a different version.
“Many people looked at it and said, ‘That would be nice in carbon fiber and aluminium.’ I said, ‘Why not?’”
That suggestion became the starting point for his first project on his own Carvera Air. While the Zerda had prompted him to consider CNC, the ST1 was where he first used his new machine to bring a different combination of materials into a complete build.
Marc adapted parts of the original design for aluminum machining and created a carbon-fiber chassis. The change required him to revisit components he had originally designed for 3D printing, considering how to reproduce their functions in the new materials. The printed ST1 provided the starting point; the aluminum and carbon-fiber version gave him another way to develop it.
At the time of the interview, this version remained a showcase build and had not yet run. The rear shaft and parts of the transmission were still 3D printed, with further CNC-made components among Marc’s plans.
For some details, he preferred to keep printing. The differential’s main gear had very small teeth that would require suitable cutting tools, so he considered powder-based 3D printing the better option at that stage.
The ST1 was still evolving. With Carvera Air in his workshop, Marc could now explore aluminum and carbon fiber within a design of his own, deciding component by component what to make next.
The Lesson Behind the Finished Parts
For Marc, the biggest adjustment was learning how to hold and locate material.
“On a CNC, every face of the part needs thought, and you need to think about it upfront.”
Some components needed machining on two faces; others required four faces or a fourth-axis setup. Small positioning errors could spoil a part when it was turned for the next operation. Some parts took three or four attempts.
Probing later helped him locate workpieces more accurately, but the fixture and machining sequence still required careful planning. The finished parts came from developing that process as well as learning to operate the machine.
His advice to someone starting out reflects his own experience: visit a local Fablab, watch experienced makers work, and get training. Understanding how a part will be held is part of designing how to make it.
Sharing the Possibility
Marc attends four or five vintage RC events a year, displaying his cars and running most of them. Visitors often recognize projects they have followed on forums. Seeing the cars in person leads to questions about tools, materials, and how much they could make themselves.
He also shares designs online, while keeping the work firmly rooted in his hobby. He wants to explore and make things, without taking on the inventory and orders of a parts business.
“RC is a way of showing it, but the reality is that I love exploring tools and developing new capabilities.”
For him, sharing is a way to help others start. After one modeling demonstration at his RC club, attendees made their own parts that day or during the following week.
“What I like is giving people the idea that it is possible—as long as you want to do it, you will find a way.”
Ru(i)n, Repair, Repeat
Marc describes his approach as “Ru(i)n, Repair, Repeat.” The extra letter matters: running a car exposes it to impacts, jumps, and the possibility of something breaking. Those failures give him information for the next version.
“I design the car, make the parts, build the car, run and ruin it, then repair and repeat. ”
Having the tools at home makes it easier to return to a design, remake a component, and try again. Carvera Air has brought metal parts and new chassis designs into that cycle, alongside the 3D printing that helped him begin.
He would like to explore molds for plastic components in the future. For now, the pleasure comes throughout the process: imagining a solution, receiving a printed part, opening the CNC enclosure, and finally seeing a car move.
The biggest change is how he sees a broken part. As a teenager, it meant waiting. Today, it is a problem he can work on.
“Today, everything is possible as long as people are willing to take the learning curve and try.”
Explore more
Keeping Two-Stroke Motorcycles Alive with RS Junkie and Carvera Air