Could be promising as long as the print is water tight.
I have doubts.
I live in a city where water leaks contribute to something like 40% of supplied potable water ‘consumption’.
Why so much? Because the pipes are old, shit, and underground. it costs a load of money to dig that shit up.
A $5 (or even $500) brass fitting that will last 50+ years is nothing when you’ve spent $1000s doing traffic management, digging up a road, replacing some pipe, and putting it all back again.
What are you going to trust? A $5 lump of solid of brass, or a $0.3 lump of plastic, made by squeezing 0.2mm layers of plastic string on top of each other, using a system whose bonding strength can be drastically affected by ambient and absorbed humidity, temperature, speed, airflow, and a whole load of other variables.
I would love some extra micro plastics in my water.
The researchers believe using a parametric-driven method for local, on-demand 3D printing of customized fittings will unlock more efficient water management.
there’s a whole lot of buzzwords there. if the current system can’t be fixed becuse there’s no parts (pipe fitting, and pipes,) to replace the leaky bits, then how exactly do you expect them to source a 3 d printer and filament? More to the point… FDM prints themselves are prone to leaking, from a myriad of issues.
I don’t think 3d printing the pipe fittings is the answer here.
that said, it’s cool and fun all the same.
I think they are not talking about access to parts but more so custom sizes? Parametric driven is just a fancy word for using easily adjustable dimensions and linking them together. Local on demand 3D printing would mean in close proximity whenever you need it. I think the local part is trivial but alright. Customized means specific for the application.
In my house for example there’s an old central heating pipe that is out of standard so connecting any modern standard pipe or appliance to it is impossible. With a weird workaround it works but still leaks. This method of 3D printing a custom connector would solve it. Not sure what other use there is really.
I don’t disagree with the need for local, on-demand production for some oddball parts in some cases, but I do think that 3d printing is the wrong technology for it in this case
This seems like a perfect use for some sort of CNC lathe to me. Pipes are cylinders, and lathes are pretty much the perfect tool to create cylindrical objects. Chuck a piece of metal (or whatever material you need to make the part out of), turn it down to the correct inner and outer diameters, cut the right threads on either end, and you’re good to go. Need to be able to pet a wrench on it? Start with hex stock.
I’d have a lot more confidence that a part isn’t going to start leaking if it’s carved out of a solid piece of material than if it’s made out of many layers of material deposited on top of each other.
The only thing a lathe would struggle with is things like elbows and tees, but with a little know-how you can get around that by just making adapters to more readily available standard elbows and such, using flexible tubing, tube benders, etc.
The idea of 3d printing these parts really feels like a “when all you have is a hammer everything looks like a nail” situation.
