great white

I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again:

3D printing.

I’ve salvaged many machines with “plastic” parts by simply designing and printing new parts. Nylon printing is a standard job. I prefer ABS myself. Nylon is anhydrous, which makes printing tricky if the filament isn’t totally dry.

I’m actually running some abs change gears in my metal lathe as we speak. Couple hundred hours on them, no signs of wear. They run between metal gears and the addition of the abs gears makes the whole machine much quieter and more pleasant to be around when running. Should they fail, pop a tooth or otherwise just wear out, an call up the file, an hour or two running on the 3d printer and I’m up and running again.

These days, I feel everyone should have a 3d printer in the house somewhere: its like having a Star Trek “replicator” at your disposal. Slower, but it does often seem like it makes things out of thin air.

I have also been known to machine out new gears in aluminum, but thats more involved snd much more expensive.

The thing is, just because a machine has a broken plastic piece doesn’t mean its worthoess. These days, there are oots of options to fix them.

The only machines I turn away are the newer ones where the entire body (and drive parts) are plastic. Those were designed as “throw away” items and thats pretty much all they’re good for. Too much to fix on them. Now, an older machine with a csst aluminum body is a different story. When they get a broken plastic piece, its worth fixing them as they often have more modern features that you just can’t get in a 1930’s-1950’s machine. I’d say a out mid 1980’s is right about where the machines are just nit worth building new parts for.

Of course, thats a different story if you’re talking about a modern machine you paid a few grand for. Thise are usually worth making parts for, assuming you can’t still buy replacement parts for them…