Philips debuts 3D printable components to repair products
Philips debuts 3D printable components to repair products
www.tomshardware.com
Philips debuts 3D printable components to repair products
50 comments
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Nice.
Those parts would be anyway hard to sell.
For the company would be a struggle to have a distribution for spare parts and they would cost more than the product anyway. So they can reach the customer through 3d printing and make their product live longer with a minimal effort. More brand should act like this.
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Making their product live longer is not usually the top priority for manufacturers. I like the initiative, of course, but I'm sort of waiting for the other shoe to drop. Sounds too good not to be a greenwashing gimmick.
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They make money on blade replacement cartridges. If the base unit lasts longer they still make more money in the long run from consumables. A lot like electric toothbrushes.
Source: I have this shaver and buy replacement blades a few times a year.
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Yep they basically give the handle away for free anyway just to get you on the blades. Giving away accessories at no-cost-to-them is totally on brand. I doubt many other companies will do it, as accessories are usually moneymakers.
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Avoids tariffs if you print them yourself
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Where does the filament come from?
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Uhhhh the filaments trees obviously
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There's enough plastic around to recycle it... PLA, PETG, ABS... can all be shredded, crushed, and recycled.
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Well that certainly makes a lot more sense now. I wasn't familiar with Philips shavers with replacement blades. 🙄
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@hahaohwow @PotatoLibre I wonder if this isn't the way to cut costs on #RightToRepair in #EU - you just put out STLs and it's up to customer to fix his problem
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Still good! Printers are quite common these days: you either have one or maybe know someone who has one.
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@PostaL
I'm not saying it's not - actually both manufacturers and customers may benefit this way
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That was my first thought, but it seems easier to run a few thousand more off the assembly line and make the original part than I'd think to have at least one person develop an adequate 3D part for an items that wasn't originally designed to be 3D printed.
Even for a relatively simple item like the trimmer guard shown, as someone who used those on their whole head for many years, they need to have decent rigidity coming from a number of angles so it cuts evenly, so someone needs to design a decent print, find what types of stock provide the right durability, flex, etc.
So it's doesn't sound that free for them or quick, but it's much cheaper than distribution for a bunch of random parts that may never get used.
I'm curious to see long term effects if this catches on. Will more original parts be made with 3D printing if they need to design prints anyway?
The big downside is even if this were available, I don't have a printer. I don't know anyone with one. I don't know where I could go to (?) rent time on one. So to me at the moment, this is as useful to me as no available replacement part! 😅
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A decent printer like from Anycubic or Creality is about 200€.
But there are also online services that can print for you.
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Oh wow. I had no clue there were so many that inexpensive now. Thank you!
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In German cities we have Repair Cafes and Makerspaces (Hackerspaces, Fablabs). Many of them are known to happily help out with 3D-printing. Maybe something similar exists in you area?
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I check periodically, but I don't see anything within an hour of me. It's a shame, as I'm in the more populated part of my state, between the biggest and third biggest cities and I read about these places and feel I'd really enjoy them.
I have a milk frother for example, that burned out its stupidly non resetting thermal fuse because it got put on the base, something bumped the start button with nothing in and it burnt out. I'd love to have someone show me how to locate that bit and replace it, but I dunno where to go for that.
Same with the 3D printer. I can afford one, but at this stage of life I'd rather someone give me a hands on run through and give me some of their wisdom from experience than me playing around and getting frustrated until I get it right.
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Thank you! I'll have to keep that in mind! It seems like a thing that would be useful to have access to. There are always little things where I think it would be cool if the local library or hardware store had a printer for things that don't seem like they'd be worth shipping but nice to have like pen refill adapters for instance.
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A Bambulab A1 Mini costs 200 bucks and churns out incredible prints with zero hassle. There's literally next to no barrier to entry anymore.
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Isn’t that the company that requires subscriptions to use your own printer?
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Yes, they had really great printers, but they enshittified so much since then.
They try to cover it by tons of marketing and sponsorships, but the community doesn't forget.
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Huh... I watched a basic review on it and that seems somewhat intriguing. It looked faster than expected, decent basic features, and he says parts availability is good. I may have to put this on the wishlist... Thanks for the tip!
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50 comments