A pet peeve of mine is all the do-dads and nicknacks printed with 3D Printers. Sure, it’s fun to get going with your printer quickly but I think the non-functional printed trinkets get way too much attention. So what’s a good use for 3D Printers then? How about fixing stuff around the house? One example is a window latch in my house broke. I could only imagine getting a replacement from the window company would be all but impossible. So, I took the broken pieces and designed a replacement. It’s been a couple years and that latch is still latching well. It cost me just a few minutes of time and I got it the same day. That’s a win-win.

Fast forward to today, I went to move my Panasonic SA-HT750 surround sound speaker stands. I remember putting them together and the plastic coupling between the two pole pieces breaking. What I don’t remember is how badly it broke! That coupling was on borrowed time since I assembled it and I don’t even know how the speaker stood up for so many years in that condition.

There is 2 stands and only one coupling was completely destroyed, the other had just started cracking. I took the ‘good’ one as a reference and tried to model something that would do the same thing but also look not-horrible. As you can see, I made the coupling a wee bit thicker than the original. I didn’t wan this one cracking too. I was so satisfied with the part that I made a second to replace the one that was still in one piece.