Category: Culture

A short story about a drawer slider bracket, 3D printing, and the internet

Among my numerous hobbies is 3-D printing. My wife bought me my first “put-it-together-yourself” kit back in 2016. Since then I’ve upgraded to a Bambu Lab X1, which is as close to a home appliance as 3D printing has ever been. It literally has never failed me short of my own errors.

Recently, my mom called me up to tell me that multiple drawers in her kitchen cabinets were broken. The rails the drawer slides along had fallen down, and the drawers were no longer horizontally level. Her husband took one apart and found that the bracket that holds the rail to the back of the cabinet had broken.

She looked online to see if she could find a replacement part, but was unsuccessful. Knowing I have a 3D printer, she asked if I could print a replacement. Always eager for a fun challenge (and because I’m a good son), I said sure.

Before I started measuring and modeling the part, I took a look online myself to see if I could find replacement parts. Sure enough, there were other people were having the same difficulty sourcing a replacement part.

So I started measuring and preparing a model.

A few minutes into doing this I thought, “Wait a second, I wonder if someone else has come up with the same solution and already made a model?”. Guess what? Someone had!

In 2017 bmonnin created and uploaded their model for others to use. They had the same problem my mom had!

“I had several brackets that support the drawer slider on my kitchen cabinet drawers break. After looking around at several different big boxes and online I couldn’t find the same bracket anywhere.

So I got to printing.

A few minutes later, a solid replacement for the part was born.

I printed it in red because red makes it go faster

There is a slight, almost imperceptible, difference between the original and the model. The lip that holds the rail in place is on both the top and bottom in the original. Assumedly so the manufacturer could print one mold and flip it for either side of the drawer. bmonnin’s model only has the lip on one side. They provided a mirrored version though, so all is well!

Since my mom needed more than one, I set up the X1 to print enough for all her drawers.

A few hours later, and less than half a spool of filament, I was done.

The next time I saw my mom, I handed a box of brackets off to her and Ken. A few days later she shared these photos.

Huzzah! A resounding success. I hope they last as long as the old ones (26 years, since the house was built).

🙂

This is one of those mundane, but also incredibly interconnected, stories where technology – combined with the social aspects of being able to share information easily and freely – come together to create a tangible solution to a problem. A small problem in this instance, but I think an example of how even larger problems can be solved when we think and work together.

As popular as ham radio

Photography as a hobby is a shrinking circle. It won’t ever go away, but it is much smaller than it ever was. I was reading this post from Mike Johnston, The Online Photographer and a few bits stood out to me from the post and comments.

Even if times really are changing, and people just aren’t interested in new cameras and better specs as much as they used to be, it doesn’t really matter that much. Here’s the thing: dedicated photographers are outsiders. I’ve always looked at us that way. We’re not attached to the industry; we’re not affected by fashions. We’re not driven by mass taste. We go our own way. We do our own thing.

As many middle-aged hipsters will attest, I love not doing mainstream hobbies. Even while I also love doing many other mainstream things. Photography is not mainstream and you can consider it outsider-ish, but at the same time more people have cameras – in their phones – than they have ever had stand-alone cameras! It’s the most mainstream thing you can think of!

It’s mainstream and outsider at the same time. To be human is to contain multitudes.

Another quote:

It’s clear to me that we’re in the sad twilight of the era of photography as a serious hobby. It’s rapidly heading for the same category as ham radio or model railroading: a quirky, shrinking tiny niche, regarded (if at all) with a flicker of tolerant amusement by the masses. I derived immense satisfaction and not a little joy from several decades spent honing my technical skills, learning how to use finicky gear, and teasing the best possible result from large format inkjets, all in service to a goal. That goal was creating the best possible photographic print. I still love a beautiful print, but it has become a niche skill. To the broader culture, photography now means billions of technically competent snapshots captured by increasingly sophisticated smart-phone cameras flooding the Internet every single day, each with the impact and lifespan of a just-hatched Mayfly or cicada.

Kind of a negative outlook, but I think I can still enjoy taking purposeful photos with my big camera while allowing others to enjoy snapshots with their smart phone – or even really good solid photos taken with a phone!

Another comment:

Strangely enough, I think it is the internet that lets those “tiny niches” survive. It is a “force multiplier” that allows a much smaller number of practitioners keep the niche alive and thriving to some extent.

When you were the editor of the model railroading magazine, magazines and clubs were the way these niches survived. As time went on and the number of practitioners shrank, magazines folded and clubs have withered and the practitioners moved to a community online where you can have a global community and draw from the whole connected world.

I “belong” to three of those niches: Photography, Garden Scale Model Railroading and HP calculators. I keep current in all three by belonging to a small but active online community. What is interesting, is that while you get your share of trolls, in general, the internet experience is much different than what you hear about in the wide world of the internet.

I don’t use popular social media and prefer the smaller corners of the web. Like dedicated forums, Flickr, community Slacks, and my personal blog. So this resonates with me.

But then again, maybe there’s hope for photography,

Another thing that’s interesting is that photography is unlikely to prove to be a generational phenomenon. Younger people aren’t showing any diminished interest in photography—quite the opposite in fact—they just won’t be practicing it in the way us older enthusiasts accepted as normal when we were young.

Hey, I just said the same thing! Ah, the joys of non-linear writing.