this post was submitted on 12 May 2025
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3DPrinting

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[–] PotatoLibre@feddit.it 93 points 1 day ago (22 children)

Nice.

Those parts would be anyway hard to sell.

For the company would be a struggle to have a distribution for spare parts and they would cost more than the product anyway. So they can reach the customer through 3d printing and make their product live longer with a minimal effort. More brand should act like this.

[–] schmaker@schmaker.eu 9 points 1 day ago (13 children)

@_haha_oh_wow_ @PotatoLibre I wonder if this isn't the way to cut costs on #RightToRepair in #EU - you just put out STLs and it's up to customer to fix his problem

[–] anon6789@lemmy.world 3 points 1 day ago (10 children)

That was my first thought, but it seems easier to run a few thousand more off the assembly line and make the original part than I'd think to have at least one person develop an adequate 3D part for an items that wasn't originally designed to be 3D printed.

Even for a relatively simple item like the trimmer guard shown, as someone who used those on their whole head for many years, they need to have decent rigidity coming from a number of angles so it cuts evenly, so someone needs to design a decent print, find what types of stock provide the right durability, flex, etc.

So it's doesn't sound that free for them or quick, but it's much cheaper than distribution for a bunch of random parts that may never get used.

I'm curious to see long term effects if this catches on. Will more original parts be made with 3D printing if they need to design prints anyway?

The big downside is even if this were available, I don't have a printer. I don't know anyone with one. I don't know where I could go to (?) rent time on one. So to me at the moment, this is as useful to me as no available replacement part! 😅

[–] magnetic_tape@infosec.exchange 4 points 1 day ago (1 children)

@anon6789
There's more and more services online that can 3D print something on demand. PCBway (not affiliated) is one of them has been reliable for some of my friends
@schmaker

[–] anon6789@lemmy.world 1 points 1 day ago

Thank you! I'll have to keep that in mind! It seems like a thing that would be useful to have access to. There are always little things where I think it would be cool if the local library or hardware store had a printer for things that don't seem like they'd be worth shipping but nice to have like pen refill adapters for instance.

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