Most practical uses of 3D Printing

Every day I hear from my friends, telling me that I never creating anything practical on my 3D printer. When I got to thinking about it, they are right. I just made cool little Doo Dads, and never anything useful. My friends use this as a reason why they don't own 3d printers, but I told them that there are so many practical uses out there, and more will come in the future. Unfortunately I couldn't think of any of these uses (at least not many) off the top of my head, when they challenged me on it. So, what practical items have you used your 3d printer to create?

It really boils down to what you call 'practical'. One might say that phone cases, phone stands, laptop coolers, organizing boxes, tool holders, bike handles, etcetera, are all practical, but then they would just buy those mass-produced ones unless they were to customize them asthetically, in which case it could be argued that the printer only adds asthetics and not practicality.

What, they are not impressed by your customized keychains?

3D printers are great if you have a need for it, otherwise, its just another toy for the inner child in you.

Anything of real value, emotionally at least, takes time to do. If it's practical then it's already mass produced.

What kind of custom 'things' have you made, I would be interested in seeing them.

What practical to somebody isn't to another sometimes.

Just keep doing what makes you happy.

Of course, I missed the most practical use of 3D printing, and the one that prompted NASA to send one to space: Replacement parts for things that break.

How much do you pay for the replacement hose clamp in a dishwasher, waiting days for it to ship? The kind of thing takes minutes to model, maybe an hour to print, and under a dollar worth of materials. Also switches, cable/hose holders, and panel holders in your car are all perfectly acceptable replacement parts to print, which in many cases cost upwards of $20 for a tiny part and sometimes aren't available at all.

Also you can make parts for low-volume and small-size products. Especially if you just 3D the complex and changing sections, and then use standard materials to fill in the large sections that remain.

We all start making "do-dads" but it invariably progresses to producing things that help you through life.
This is the big point, if you are young and still in school, then there aren't many things you need to make, for your life to be any easier than it already is. :)
But if you are a little older (like I am) and are responsible for the up-keep of your home and lifestyle, opportunities for the 3D printer present themselves often.

My wife bought a dress over the net and it arrived missing buckles for the thin shoulder straps, I drew some up in 3D Max in about 10 minutes and printed a few off in a further 10 minutes. Fixing the Wife's disappointment with a faulty dress in 20 minutes....GOLD!
I busted an oddly shaped plastic washer on a tap, had a replacement printed faster than going down to the nearest hardware store.
I have replaced a broken knob on my dishwasher, made a spare screw top bottle and lid for my Wife's spray-tan machine. and many other minor items.

Most importantly, to me at least, have been the improvements I have made to the printer, a nozzle fan and duct, a filament spool holder, a filament guide and best of all an improved extruder, in fact quite a few improved extruders.

Have I printed enough to justify the cost of a printer? Well, clearly no, not in any direct sense. Have I learnt things? Do I now look at the world a little differently? Have I had fun and been entertained for dozens of hours messing with my printer? Hell YES.

If you haven't made anything practical yet, you're not thinking "printer" enough. :)

This is my reason for getting a 3D printer in the first place. No way to buy one anywhere and to have one injection moulded before I knew it was right would end up costing 10 times what a printer costs.

http://homepage.ntlworld.com/dknpowe...tasys/box3.png
http://homepage.ntlworld.com/dknpowe...tasys/box1.jpg

some plastic spare parts,it is helpful for this kind.

The most practical use now is to make more parts for the printer itself.

lol,it maybe

3D printing is extremely useful for tinkerers like me, besides designing and printing finished objects directly I've found that using 3D printing to create jigs and templates to help in the construction of for example planes and multicopters is a real time and effort saver.

For example, yesterday I had to replace a scratched port on one of my aerial photography planes, the port is made of acrylic that needs to be drilled and cut precisely, I quickly made a jig for that in 3D, printed it and used to assist me in the drilling and cutting operations. Not only it made things so much easier than using printed templates, calipers to take measurements, etc, etc... it also makes it a very repeatable process, next time I need a new port I just use the jig and hey presto, a new, identical part to the previous one.

Besides that I make lots of little bits and pieces for my planes that can't be found anywhere.

We have a steady stream of projects here where someone has a broken or missing doo dad they need a replacement for, and replacements are made of unobtanium. Recent examples include:

Replacement marker light lens for a car
Replacement part for a chair
Replacement part for a camper window frame
Replacement paddle for a breadmaker
Replica glovebox door handle for a 1974 FJ55
Replica "Turbo" grill badge for a BJ74 Land Cruiser

The latter two has resulted in sales of many dozens to the original customer who then re-sold them to others who had the same need. Most of the structural parts we make with Taulman nylon for its strength.

We also make custom orthotic inserts for a local Pedorthist - he scans the patient's foot, pulls the scan into his software, makes corrections for the patient's gait, then we build him the insert out of Taulman nylon. This bypasses many labor steps in the tradition way to make orthotic inserts and saves the Pedorthist a ton of labor and mess.

I could go on, but the majority of our business is making useful things for people. Most of the time they pay us to design them because they don't know how to do 3D design, and they pay us to build them because they can't justify a printer for a couple hundred dollars worth of stuff. And the ones that go over a certain threshold then buy their 3D printer from us.