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Making niche solutions is the point

58 points

by evakhoury

2 days ago

| past

| 5 comments

| ntietz.com

| HN

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arjie

1 hour ago

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My wife and I bought a Bambu P1S and I think the machine has had a duty cycle of 30% (excluding when we weren’t in town). It’s great fun. The majority of the models are ones we get from the Internet, it’s true.

But my wife used some base open source components to design a block that goes into the bits of a playpen that we used to have and transform it into something that docks with the wall instead of only with itself[0].

And I have designed with Claude a few small things like card holders for the board game power grid[1].

I wish there were better AI tools for interacting with modeling software. As it stands I use OpenSCAD with Claude and that seems as good as it can be. There are Solidworks AI startups but they’re like for professionals.

The Bambu P1S I have is quite low friction to set up. And I have an AMS2 Pro on top of it that feeds different kinds of filament (material and color) into the printer. I have just the one but now I wish I had more AMS hooked up.

0: https://wiki.roshangeorge.dev/w/Blog/2026-01-15/Modeling_Wit...

1: https://wiki.roshangeorge.dev/w/Blog/2026-01-11/Modeling_Wit...

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ramboldio

2 hours ago

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I think that is a fantastic insight that 'Making niche solutions is the point' with 3D printing.

Unfortunately, it is still very hard to _design_ niche solutions. The usability of CAD tools did not really improve at all in the last 20 years..

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Arcanum-XIII

2 hours ago

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CAD is complicated, yes. But the biggest pain point is that engineering requires a lot of adjacent knowledge about material, tolerance, mechanical design, tooling, and so on. Making things requires patience.

CAD is the easy part.

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wat10000

49 minutes ago

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That really depends on what you're making. I've made a lot of things that are basically, I want an object with this shape, model that shape, print that shape, success. For things where tolerances and material properties matter, a little trial and error takes care of a lot of it.

There's an engineering saying that anybody can design a bridge that won't fall down, but it takes an engineer to design a bridge that just barely won't fall down. Why do you want a bridge that just barely won't fall down? Because it's a lot cheaper to build. That's not much of a concern when you're printing little doodads at home. I waste some material by designing overly-strong structures, or getting it wrong and iterating. That's fine, the stuff is cheap.

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barumrho

2 hours ago

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AI coding tools are providing non-programmers giving similar ability. Not production quality, but still useful to them everyday and they can tweak as they go.

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uoaei

1 hour ago

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Once upon a time, the Unix philosophy was lauded in these venerated halls. "Do one thing and do it well."

Now the hype has seemed to shift to "do absolutely anything just barely well enough to get people to pay for it".

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pixl97

1 hour ago

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Turns out attempting to pay the bills on unix philosophy didn't go very far.

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esseph

20 minutes ago

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Man, that's a weird saying. Very weird.

"Unix Philosophy", which many of us wouldn't be here if it didn't exist, wasn't designed with any sort of money in mind.

That's like complaining that the company that picks up your residential trash is a shit company for not reducing your travel time to work.

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direwolf20

3 hours ago

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I should get a 3D printer

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CountHackulus

37 minutes ago

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Check your local library, a lot of them have one and can help you get started. It's usually pennies to print too. I printed an adapter for my coffee grinder at my local library a few weeks ago and it took 2 days and cost me $4. Fantastic stuff.

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Bayart

2 hours ago

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I've been telling myself that for as long as 3D-printing has been consumer tech (about 20 years ?) and now it's shifted to "I'll borrow one my friends' printers if needs be".

In truth every time an issue fit for 3D printing has come up in my life, I solved it easily with wood and cardboard. I'm starting to recognize I might be a craftsman at heart.

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CyLith

59 minutes ago

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I have had a similar experience; my preferred material to work with is wood. However, as I got more into tinkering with electronics and vintage computing, I'm finding more instances where wood does not achieve sufficient strength-to-weight ratio, especially for small parts where wood grain and anisotropy becomes a significant factor to consider.

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IncreasePosts

2 hours ago

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Borrowing from a friend/library/work/low-cost maker space is the way to go unless you plan on printing with the thing for numerous hours per day on average. Having said that, once you start 3d printing, it becomes a tool you reach to more and more

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ge96

2 hours ago

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Even with my old/cheap Ender 3 Pro, I printed something overnight took 13.5 hrs, there it was

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ge96

1 hour ago

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A side/tangent note, I wonder if it says something about myself/character, I choose the faster print than the surface finish, so I'll have this rough surface finish due to the supports. But it goes from 20hrs+ to 13.5hrs so it's like I'll take the faster option. What I printed was a shell with internal screw mounts, it was a big piece about 5.5x4x2.5" with 20% infill, regular temp/speed and the structure support for overhang.

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nozzlegear

1 hour ago

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I thought the same thing while reading this. But I worry that I'd get one and it'd just sit on a shelf somewhere collecting dust.

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jagged-chisel

1 hour ago

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A whole variety of items and devices are good for this purpose, but 3D printing are an especially costly way to keep dust off your table.

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gurjeet

2 hours ago

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You might already have one, and just don't know it :-) If you don't, it's much cheaper to get one that the author considers a 3D printer.

From TFA:

> 1. I like to think that all printers are 3D, unless it's a printer in Flatland.

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direwolf20

1 hour ago

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It's actually a 4D printer unless it exists for just an instant, or an 11D printer if string theory is correct, or an 8==D printer if that happens to be the value in the variable D.

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pbronez

1 hour ago

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Skip the too-cheap entry level and get something reliable. They’re great to have handy, but easy to fall into maintenance and calibration hell. Modern 3D printers have enough sensors and smarts to self-calibrate reliably. That’s essential to make it a tool and not a tinker toy.