3D printing for the handyman

Ever since I got my 3D printer people have been asking if I’ve printed anything useful with it yet. Of course the answer depends a lot on your definition of useful. I like the cookie cutters we’ve printed. I’ve made a very handy thing for attaching my son’s GoPro camera to his bike handlebars. But my current favourite is a little set I whipped up to fix a problem created by a leaking tap.

We’ve had a leaking tap in one of the bathrooms since we moved in to our house. Changing the washer did nothing. Paying a plumber to fix the copper piping under the taps turned out to be expensive and, ultimately, a waste of money. So I decided to replace the tap in its entirely. Some research revealed that replacing separate taps was fiddly and prone to going wrong, while putting in a mixer tap was a straightforward affair. Elder son and I managed to remove the old set-up and put in a new mixer tap in a pleasant hour on a Sunday afternoon.

But that left two gaping holes where the old taps were. Two gaping holes now hidden by appropriately coloured, 3D-printed hemispheres. And that was useful I say.

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