Tuesday, May 07, 2013

[drlntplk] Interchangeable parts for the consumer

Interchangeable parts are a wonderful invention, but a great many consumer products have individual parts inaccessible to the consumer, if he or she wants to replace a broken part.

Yet mass produced items have identical parts between items, so it is a perfect opportunity to deploy interchangeable parts.

It seems merely a logistical problem, solvable with technology, for a part to reach the consumer. What forces are causing market failure, if there is?

3D printing can making transferring a part as simple as transferring information about making the part.  Mass produced parts almost certainly have specifications that could be easily published.

Perhaps a regulation that manufactured goods needs to be distributed with manufacturing information, kind of like ingredients for food, or source code for software.

Perhaps a strict separation between manufacturer and designer, and the manufacturer must be willing to sell a given part to anyone.  Need to figure out how to do intellectual property, especially nowadays protected by trade secrets, but I don't think those problems are insurmountable.

Inspired by two broken wristwatches, too inexpensive to have professionally repaired.

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