Having a 3D printer can change the way you think about outstanding home repairs. Sometimes, a fix is just a few minutes away, and it only costs a few cents in filament and a bit of spare time.
Custom door and furniture shims
Plumb doors and windows
Credit: Surry Village Creations / MakerWorld
A shim is a thin piece of material that is used to fill gaps or add spaces between items. Shims can be the same thickness throughout, or they can be tapered. They’re made from virtually any material, but many household applications typically only require lightweight shims made from wood to handle low compression loads.
The perfect example of an instance where you might want to use a shim is a door that is no longer straight, that even potentially drags along the floor. Adding a shim allows you to create an offset to bring the door back into alignment. In this instance, the shim goes directly behind each hinge in a pair to prevent the frame from bowing. You can use this technique for windows too.
While making your own shims from wood is possible, 3D printing a shim is fast and guarantees that both are identical. One of my favorite examples of a shim is the Cutaway Shim by Surry Village Creations, which is designed to snap off easily in place. Other designs (like this one) don’t require the hinges to be removed at all, just loosened and slid into place.
With a digital caliper and five minutes in TinkerCAD, you could fairly easily design your own.
Zipper sliders and pulls
Don’t throw that expensive bag out
Credit: MisterJ / MakerWorld
A broken zipper slider means a broken zip, and a broken zip cannot be trusted anymore. This can spell the end of your very expensive outdoor jacket, favorite bag, or any item with many years left in it, like a pencil case. But you can 3D print yourself a replacement and save the day.
MakerWorld user MisterJ has revised their zipper slider design three times, and installation is possible without having to undo any stitches thanks to a slide and lock design (with a dab of glue for good measure). It works for both standard and reverse bale zips (like those found in waterproof garments), and you can even get creative with the color.
There are also all manner of zipper pull tabs available, from those that bind two ends of fabric to over-engineered ratchet designs.
TPU feet for furniture and other items
Avoid floor scratches and wobbly furniture
Credit: NinjaTek
Thermoplastic polyurethane, or TPU for short, is a soft and flexible material that’s used when a print requires rubber-like properties. Though truly soft TPU like the exotic NinjaFlex can be very hard to print and is generally seen as being incompatible with Bowden tube setups, tougher TPU like that sold by Bambu Lab still has its place.
Thanks to its grippy nature, TPU is particularly good at holding things in place and preventing scratches. You can print feet for your furniture to keep your floors in good condition, and you can custom-design thin TPU strips to replace missing feet on items like laptops, keyboards, and anything else that’s more wobbly than it needs to be.
Practical mounts for smart sensors and cameras
Overcome your mounting problems
Credit: Adam Davidson / How-To Geek
Most smart home sensors, doorbells, and security cameras come with some means of mounting the item on the wall. Unfortunately, this isn’t always up to the same standard as the sensor itself. These mounts can be unsightly, impractical, and poorly suited to the ideal mounting position you have in mind.
In the case of doorbells, this can mean that the camera is pointing in the completely wrong direction. You might have an angled door frame, or your ideal mounting surface might be the front of your weatherboard (lap siding) home, pointing directly up at the sky.
This is just one example of how a 3D printer can make your smart home even better. If you hop on a repository like MakerWorld, you’ll see all manner 45º mounts to Ring doorbells and IKEA motion sensor wall mounts to get you started.
Backpack buckles and clips
Cheaper and faster than buying them
Credit: Timbuk2
You can buy replacement buckles and clips for backpacks and other items that use them, but it can be difficult to find something that’s the exact size and color you need. Sure, black goes with everything, but it’s not always the right choice. And considering these are just cheap bits of plastic, they cost more than you’d think to replace.
So why not 3D print your own? There are a myriad of different designs already on MakerWorld and Printables (like this one), which you can modify by scaling them up or down and choosing your preferred color. While PLA should be fairly tough, PLA+ or PETG might be worth considering for long-term durability (or you can just print another).
Wall plugs for any hole
But don’t make a habit of it
Credit: Ryobi
Wall plugs are one of those items I’d generally advise against 3D printing. They’re so cheap that you’ve probably got a whole garage full of them already; it’s simply not worth the print time for most applications. There is one exception, and that’s when you have a particularly large or small hole to fill.
Right now, I have a hand-crank winch for an awning that takes so much weight that it’s eaten away at the concrete that it’s been drilled into. I simply don’t have a plug big enough to fill that hole for a quick fix, and even if I head to the hardware store to buy some, I’d have to get a whole pack of them (and I’d probably never use them again).
So I’m just going to measure the hole with my digital caliper and scale up an existing model to suit. It’ll still only cost cents, and it’s a fast enough print that I can set it off on the same day I feel like getting the job done.
Did you miss our last roundup of 3D printing fixes? Check out some more quick and cheap 3D prints to fix problems around the home.
