Your 3D printer is a tool looking for a problem to solve. Sure, you can print stuff to sell, or use the printer as a medium to express your creativity. But one of the earliest and most enduring uses of this technology is solving issues in the home.
What You Can Get vs What You Want
You can already print a house, but most of us live in traditional houses, and when you need a shelf or new piece of furniture, you go buy it and install it. Often these run-of-the-mill shelves are fine, but in an ideal world, that shelf would be an inch or two wider to fit perfectly in your space. You can’t always find or afford a completely custom solution, so you compromise or do without. Where, after all, can you buy a green, glow-in-the-dark triple-decker wall-mounted cell phone charging station that fits exactly into that awkward space in your kitchen?
3D printing is already widely used in many industries, including making and customizing EVs, so why not in your home?
3D Print Replacement Parts
When something in your house breaks, most people just say “oh no,” while those with 3D printers jump at the chance to make a new part, and probably improve it while they’re at it.
Your entire house is full of things that will eventually break and need replacing.
There are three categories of replacement parts 3D makers often print: everyday things that can be easily bought, but are more fun to print; things that break and are difficult or expensive to replace; and fittings that cannot be replaced.
Everyday Objects
Your house is full of little things that can break or get lost, are a pain in the neck until replaced, and are more fun to print than to buy. These include, but are not limited to:
- Light switches
- Light sockets
- Bath plugs
- The little fitting that secured the bath plug before it got lost
- Door handles and knobs
- Drawer sliders
- Wardrobe shelf fittings
- Tap handles
This list will renew itself continuously as small things break and remain unfixed because the hassle of getting a new one is slightly greater than the irritation of living with it.
Difficult or Expensive to Replace Objects
Things like fridges, stoves, washing machines, and other appliances all have intricate, fiddly little parts just waiting to break. It is often a tiny plastic pin or little hook that suddenly goes click and then the appliance no longer works.
You can normally get a replacement part, but either you have to drive to the other side of town, or you have to wait while they order it, or you have to replace the entire washing machine door rather than just the little hook that broke. The appliance thus affected is normally too expensive to replace, but you can’t really live without it while you wait for the part. Or you can recreate the broken part using a program such as Blender, and have the whole thing working again in forty minutes.
Things That Cannot Normally Be Replaced
Start in the kitchen. A handle on your favorite cooking pot has broken, and there is no way to buy a new one. Or the wooden handle on your chef’s knife has finally gone. No problem if you can print a replacement.
3D makers often like to print such parts in a special color, to show that they created it, and because they can. Some even have signature non-standard colors, such as those that come in a filament subscription box.
3D Printing Objects to Make Your Living Space Better
Our houses are different, and we are different. There are many ways to make your life better, coat hooks or bookshelves, and many ways to make the messy parts of our homes neater and more efficient.
Cable Organizers
Despite allegedly living in a wireless world, most of us are caught up in a jungle of cables, each one crucial to keeping us connected and able to work. The back of most home computers is a total mess, and you have to trace each cable from one end to the other to find out what goes where. Sure, you can use cable ties, but they are more permanent, and where is the fun in that anyway?
There are many different cable organizers you can download and print, or you can design your own, and you can color code them as well.
Gardening Equipment
Whether it lives in a storeroom or in your garage, your gardening equipment is most likely a tangled mess. That is because it is all so specific that they cannot live together in a cupboard or on a shelf. A weed whacker and a garden hose will become inextricably linked over time without any human intervention.
A shovel, a lobber, and a lawnmower will all require very specific hooks or hangers to keep them off the floor and on the wall.
Using Your 3D Printer to Make the Most of Your Home
Once you have a 3D printer, you will find endless issues in your home to fix, a neverending list of ways to make it better to live in. All you need is your printer, enough filament, some basic technical skills, and the desire to create something better.
