In the future, you’ll just download the STL and fix it yourself
Well, not quite.
Back when I started doing 3D printing (around 2002 or so, very expensive, very cool) one piece of sales hype was –
Soon, when your dishwasher breaks, you’ll just buy the STL for the part and print it at home! Plumbing supply closed and you need that J-trap, boom!.
Some 3D printer hardware salesman I had to deal with back in the 2000s
Yeah — not quite yet, still. And as long as certain big-box stores are sourcing J-Traps at $0.05 each wholesale I don’t see this happening any time soon.
However, if you have some skills and something strange breaks, well, you stand a chance. My Xerox (nee Tektronix, RIP, sniff, memories) Color Printer decided to stop feeding paper. Turns out, an integral little lifty-springy-part broke in half. Cyanoacrylate wasn’t going to fix it.
A replacement paper drawer was going to be a few hundred dollars (‽) so, yeah, let’s get fixing.
ml at Pixar.Some measuring and openSCAD, and an hour or two of printing on my Formlabs with the tough and durable resin, trimming, cleaning, curing, and running around the department, boasting and, it’s fixed.
