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Comment by Tabular-Iceberg | Hacker News Reader

It’s a little sad to see 3D printing used for such trivial components, where you get all the weaknesses of a 3D printed part but none of the strengths.

Here’s a free startup idea: a structural search engine for off-the-shelf parts. E.g. “show me all parts that fits around round tubing of this diameter and has a flat bit at the other end”.

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What? Small one-off fixings is one of the perfect uses of 3D printers. Your startup idea won't work precisely because of the huge variety of shapes that you'd need. Your searches would almost always return 0 results.

> Your startup idea won't work

It's a free startup idea, if you take it and it doesn't pan out I'll happily refund you the $0 for it.

> precisely because of the huge variety of shapes that you'd need. Your searches would almost always return 0 results.

Sure, the risk is either zero results or large amounts of irrelevant results. But it's for seemingly impossibly large search spaces that search engines are the most valuable. It's no coincidence that Google is a trillion dollar company and pressing control or command-f on a web page isn't.

Edit: also, while we're poking holes in the idea, the main problem isn't the feasibility of the technology, the main problem is that people who need drying-rack-holder-uppers probably do not constitute a rapidly growing market, which is the other thing Google had going for it.

Ha, I can't even find a pair of trousers with a given size in a nearby shop using a Google search.

Plus the whole problem of “the dimensions listed have no relation to real life measurements”.

https://www.mcmaster.com/tube-caps/for-od~1/

(McMaster-Carr has a bit of a reputation as "ultimate online hardware store" among makers)

Edit: Oh, just realized that you meant something like the 3D print linked in the article and not an end cap.

Maybe one of these https://www.mcmaster.com/trim/

I would have gone with a piece of foam pipe insulation, available at any hardware store for about $3 (or McMaster-Carr [1], to stay at the topic of a one-stop shop).

I think it's very much a case of knowing what exists and where to search for it, while 3d printing allows you to just think about what you want to exist.

1: https://www.mcmaster.com/pipe-insulation/flexible-rubber-foa...

Yes, something like McMaster-Carr, but you search not by the name but the shape of the thing.

You'd probably have to take all their CAD files and put into some kind of searchable index, where the query itself is some kind of a CAD description of what you want, like a drying-rack-holder-upper.

If you have some basic tools around this would be a 15-minute woodworking project.

- 15 minutes would be gathering the necessary tools and gathering at the workbench.

- Some other 10 would be measuring and thinking how to do it

- Then 15 minutes would be measuring, drawing, cutting and drilling. Oh, and I forgot I would need this tool, let's get it downstairs/from garage/house...

- Finding out it doesn't fit perfectly you already lost 5 mins. And now if hole is too big, you create new one, +15 mins. If hole is is too small, you search for your sandpaper. Sand it + fit, sand it + fit...

- Ahh, it broke, because wood was too thin. Retry.

- Putting tools back, cleaning up your place +10 min

Total: Little more than hour realistically :)

/from a perspective of DIYer, how it usually happens with me.

“ Some other 10 would be measuring and thinking how to do it”

That is wildly optimistic :)

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