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Imagine a future where you can print anything from a toy for your kids, to a spare part for a household appliance, to a bionic limb, to a house in the country. Imagine no more, because that future is already here, thanks to the magic of 3D printing, a technology that is set to change our lives in ways big and small.
by Adam Oxford*
This weekend, I did something rather remarkable. It was especially remarkable since the job I did was so very, very uunremarkable. It wasnât as if I scaled Kilamanjiro without the use of my arms or legs, as this very remarkable South African woman did over the same few days. No, my achievement was altogether more domestic in nature. I fixed my dishwasher.
Now Iâm not especially handy or good at DIY, but I would be lying if I said this was the first piece of kitchen equipment Iâve ever repaired. What made this particular fix stand out was that I did it with the aid of a 3D printer.
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The dishwasher itself is an old one, but one which was perfectly serviceable in almost all ways but one. A small plastic plug fell off the back of one of the drawer runners a couple of years ago. Its job was to stop the drawer coming out too far and smashing to the ground, taking with it a complement of reasonably decent but chipped mugs and some fine but cheap glasses too.
For two years, my family and I have fought with this dishwasher, carefully opening andvclosing it, realigning bits whenever they fall out. Because the one thing you should know about old dishwashers is that itâs almost impossible to find small replacement parts.
So I finally did something Iâve been meaning to do for months. I loaded up Tinkercad – anvonline application for 3D modelling – and designed a rough approximation of the missing part. Then I fed that design into my 3D printer, and 20 minutes later I had a dishwasher that is as good as new.
Quite why I feel this was an achievement is odd. Iâve owned a 3D printer for a few yearsvand have made phone stands, USB key holders, Minecraft characters and – once – dozensvof octopus shaped pill boxes for dispensing sweets at my daughterâs school (donât ask).
But this was the first time I really felt like that it earned its keep. It did something beyondvnovelty or aesthetic. It produced something truly useful.
Inspired, I went away and designed and printed a series of brackets for fixing a dodgy door handle on my car. The results werenât quite as effective, but still better than they could have been.
Why do I bring this up now? Because Capetonians may have been lucky enough to catch a series of events aimed at âmakersâ over the last month. And the maker movement is really where the future lies. The maker ethos is summed up by a friend from the University of Pretoria as using low cost tools, like 3D printers, to customise the world around us in ways that were, until recently, the prerogative of professional artisans.
âAt the core of maker culture is the idea that you can make stuff and make it better than a company can produce it for you,â says Denis Kriel, who helped establish a makerspace at the University of Pretoria. âMy son of 10 is already using my 3D printer to print parts for his toys. He’s already made the mindshift that he’s not a consumer, he is a creator too.â
One aspect of the maker philosophy is to learn how to fix stuff yourself, so youâre not reliant on expensive work services or manufacturers fleecing you for replacement parts. The other side is about celebrating creativity in all its forms.
The culmination of the recent maker events was Maker Faire Cape Town, the largest Maker Faire yet organised in South Africa. If you did catch it, youâll have seen a drone that can be flown using a homemade glove and gesture control and a life-sized 3D printed mannequin.
There were solar powered balloons made from recycled plastic bags, and most of all there were dozens of highly creative people having fun making stuff. Some of it was practical, some of it was artistic, and all of it was inspiring in its own way. Just like my dishwasher stop, then.
* Adam Oxford is the editor-in-chief of Hypertext Media, a South Africa publishing house that specialises in technology issues from across the continent and produces daily news at htxt.co.za daily. Based in Johannesburg but originally from the UK, heâs written for most of the major technology publishers over the last 17 years.
** This article first appeared on the Change Exchange, an online platform by BrightRock, provider of the first-ever life insurance that changes as your life changes. The opinions expressed in this column are the writerâs own and donât necessarily reflect the views of BrightRock.
