Here's a real-life example of how a 3D printer can save the day around the house.
@landonator got these toy remote control cars from his Grandparents for Christmas. They're cool little things that can really get going around the house and two of them make things interesting as they try and race each other around the furniture.
The two of us were testing them out on the first battery charge and things took a turn for the worse. Mario drove right underneath someone walking down the hall, who instinctively moved themselves to keep from falling, and took the back wheel out in the process. Snapped it right off where the axle meets the wheel.
Ordinarily, this would have been the end for that racecar. Most plastic products these days aren't designed to be fixed and that should have been it for this toy after only 15 minutes of driving - unless you have a 3D printer.
Luckily, the plastic piece was fairly simple to redraw in Fusion 360 and within 30 minutes the piece was being created on the printer.
The axle was designed to have some flex to the way it attaches between the motor and the wheel. It's quite an interesting design.
The black pieces are the original part and the white is the new piece.
A little bit of sandpaper around the edges of the new part and the car was driving as good as new within a few hours. It's been going for a few days now with no issues. To try and fix that by contacting the company for a replacement part, if they'd even send one, would have taken weeks.
As a bonus print, this little Minecraft guy below is a test piece for a Minecraft chess set I'm going to try and make. @landonator also got a chessboard for Christmas and he picked it up quite easily. He does tend to get bored of it halfway through a game so I'm hoping the Minecraft set will hold his attention longer.
This first print was just to see how the creases on the arms and legs showed up. I'll still need to add a base and then I'll use this as a starting model. From there I can lift up the arms for the zombies, make the legs skinny for an Enderman, or change the body for a skeleton and add some facial detail for each. If you don't know Minecraft I guess that would be jibberish. There's definitely enough characters to make a chess set out of, though.
