Researchers from Canada’s Western University have developed a new open-source approach for 3D printing water pipe fittings. According to the London, Ontario-based team, around 126 billion cubic meter
Could be promising as long as the print is water tight.
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 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.