Blog Entry #7
May 25, Albuquerque, NM USA
🕐 2 minutes to read
The new broom and dustpan are fine. Honest tools. They sweep and pan without complaint.
Except the people who designed the handles apparently lived in a world without round hooks.
They don’t fit the hooks in the laundry room. I don’t know anybody who has hooks that narrow. Maybe the carpetbaggers over at Generic Amazon Chinese-Made Household Goods, Inc. decided the broom and dustpan should look like they were smiling.
I was not smiling.
A Small Problem in Broomville
So I pinned on my maker tin star, saddled up the trusty 3D printer, and rode into the dusty little town of Broomville. Trouble was hanging from a narrow slot where a round hole should have been.
It took a five-minute web search and about thirty minutes of squishing thirty-four cents’ worth of plastic string into a solution that worked.
I didn’t make a “better” broom. I did not disrupt the ancient and noble dustpan industry. I made the missing piece.
An odd little ring of plastic with a hole in it printed at a very low resolution. It’s not pretty or refined. But it works and for a broom and dustpan, its more than good enough.
The thing the store doesn’t sell because my laundry room is not a market segment.
The Pilgrim of Compromise
Without it, I would have lived with the set propped in a corner until the irritation fermented enough to send me wandering the aisles of Ace Hardware like a pilgrim of compromise.
I would have bought something close…
Then something closer…
Then I would have come home with six dollars of zinc-plated regret and a plan involving washers, gravity, and denial.
Make the Missing Piece
With a 3D printer, you eyeball the problem, make the part, and move on with your life.
Everybody should have access to one of these wondrous little machines. Buy one, borrow one, befriend someone who has one, or see whether your library offers printing as a service.
Not because it replaces the hardware store.
Because sometimes the thing you need does not exist until you make it.