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.
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! 😅
In German cities we have Repair Cafes and Makerspaces (Hackerspaces, Fablabs). Many of them are known to happily help out with 3D-printing. Maybe something similar exists in you area?
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.
@_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
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! 😅
In German cities we have Repair Cafes and Makerspaces (Hackerspaces, Fablabs). Many of them are known to happily help out with 3D-printing. Maybe something similar exists in you area?