Wednesday 23 November 2016

3d printing 3d printer bits (and circular economy)






So a friend got in touch this week with a problem.. he needed a bit printing for his 3d printer that had broke. I was very pleased to print him a replacement part. I love that 3d printers can replicate parts for themselves and other machines, as my friends machine is open source they actually sent me a file someone had designed that was an improved version of the part that broke. Brilliant. I hope, whatever the wibbly wobbly future of tech and community brings, that these aspects remain.... a great example of a circular economy.

In fact... we can go further.. 

My friends printer sits in an office in a company (the team in the office all chipped in to have a 3dprinter in the dept to play with!) and when I dropped of the replacement part they said one of the work uses for it was printing replacement gears for a part of the conveying system in the warehouse of the company.. a part no longer available for purchase. So my bit fixes his printer which fixes a conveyor system ... and as I was passing their location with another work task the carbon footprint miles of this part are reduced even further. 

And finally the part that broke is PLA so my friend can stick that part in his compost bin and it will decompose....

reuse, repair, reduce, recycle.

1 comment:

Aaron Massie said...

It’s a great idea to have 3D printers replicate parts for themselves and other machines,If the printed materials are more diverse and not limited to plastics, then it will be better.