This question might seem a little bit out of place, but hear me out.
Being up late again I stumbled across thread #72845 in the Imperial forum. Somebody was searching for some plastic bearing housings for the wringer on a Maytag wringer washer.
Now, I'm not in the place in my life where I could actually start to collect and refurbish machines, but in university, I have a lot of contact with 3D-CAD-modeling and production techniques.
And I often hear or read about some small plastic part that is missing and NLA, especially with those of us that refurbish the oldest of the old machines.
But even on more modern machines, some parts are just annoying to buy. See dishwasher rack wheels, dials, covers etc.
So, I wanted to ask the collectors around here if they think they'd have use of a 3D-printer.
I mean, don't get me wrong, designing things in CAD-software takes some skill and learning.
They only can reproduce plastic parts. Some metal parts might be replaceable with certain plastics (for example, a lot of pulleys can be made from verry basic plastics), but not that many.
Further there is the incredible faultprone-ness of 3D-printing. Like, for most people, half of all prints fail. And getting things to work in the first place can be really tidious.
Oh, and most 3D-printers aren't exactly cheap.
But especially for those who often deal with old machines for which most spare parts are NLA, wouldn't that be a godsent?
Comes to the Rescue!
