A Shower Runs Through it

This is one of those "Gee whiz!" stories about 3D printing...

A coworker recently renovated the guest shower in his home, resulting in damage to a 1970's era plastic drain fitting.  He couldn't find a suitable replacement at any of the hardware stores so I offered to make a replacement.

It took only a minute to model a replacement in CAD.  The fitting just needed a flat grid for water to drain through and a collar (not shown) that extends into the opening in the shower floor.

Here's the replacement fitting next to the broken one.  My replacement part is PVC, the SD300's default material, which is ideal for plumbing.

The replacement fitting is thin but nice and strong because the layers are aligned with the natural laminations of the PVC material.  Since it's going to be used in a wet environment I treated it with PVC pipe primer to seal the edges.

It's not a very exciting model, but it was fun and satisfying because I produced it just a few hours after inspecting the original part.  And I posted it to Thingiverse.