Darko Nikolic is design director and co-owner of Tride Design Studio based in Shenzhen. He started to actively exploring opportunities for sustainable product design, and noticed that consumer 3d printers can play a very important role in it through customization and repairs.
Darko’s interest in sustainable design began while studying industrial design at university. Since then hehas continuously explored opportunities for sustainable design products. He moved to China 10 years ago where he started working in high tech industry, designing and developing drones and electronic products in close cooperation with many specialized Chinese manufacturers.
About five years ago, Darko began using 3D printers regularly and actively networked with people from the biggest consumer 3D printer brands that are based in Shenzhen.
The convenience, reliability and diversity of 3D printing technologies and materials, combined with long experience in product design, CAD modeling, iterative prototyping and fewer limits to design and geometry that can be 3D printed allowed him to quickly design and 3D print simple objects for his own needs. Some of these designs are available to download from Cults3D.
Later on he started repairing and modifying products to better suit his needs, discovering many ways that can make repairs and customization easier. While designing camera grip and computer mouse, he noticed that layered structure of 3D printed objects can provide additional grip,he also found that many creative professionals with big hands find most of computer mice uncomfortable to use for extended periods of time.
With extensive experience in design research and reverse engineering Darko concluded that many products on the market are designed with short-term trends, average users and planned obsolescence in mind. These products often lack options for convenient customization, upgrades and repairs while finding spare parts is often very challenging.
Consumer 3D printers became more more affordable, diverse and reliable, giving many people easy access to parts that can be easily, conveniently and inexpensively manufactured locally within a few minutes or hours. This allows users to easily update and repair their products whenever needed, according to their personal needs while reducing the time, frustration, carbon emissions, plastic and electronic waste that broken product can cause with single point of failure.
This is more obvious with smaller brands who do not do repairs locally or who would rather ship new product to replace the one that just became plastic and electronic waste.
For these reasons, it is crucial to consider design for 3D printing early in the design process to create more sustainable and customizable products. Design for 3D printing means that parts are designed with average capabilities and features of common consumer 3D printers so that parts can be 3D printed within specific tolerances and common 3D printing materials, with minimal or no supports, to make Z seam less noticeable, while preserving structural integrity and properties according to specific use case of each product.
The vast diversity of 3D printing materials are also providing many opportunities compared to conventional manufacturing. These materials are often industrially bio-compostable (PLA), recyclable (many) or even use materials that couldn’t be recycled before (nylon filled with recycled carbon fibers or fiberglass for example), while photo-sensitive resins are less sustainable option it is important to mention that these resins can be mixed to make 3D printing materials with fine-tuned properties (transparency, toughness, impact resistance,…).
Tride Design Studio designed a multifunctional mouse named D Mouse that is designed with 3D printing, ease of repair and customization in mind. Darko hopes that design principles used for its design will inspire more brands to design and develop highly sustainable and customizable products that can reduce plastic and electronic waste.
D Mouse won Red Dot 2024 Design Award and it is expected to launch next year when he will reveal some more details behind the whole design process.
Written by Darko Nikolic, Design Director at Tride Design Studio Shenzhen
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