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Young French Design Studio Creates Doodads to Fix Commonplace Objects

Something we’ve seen a lot of: New industrial designers desperate to leave their mark, designing yet another soap holder, key ring, titanium pen, fidget spinner, et cetera. In contrast, Paris-based Studio Extrude, started by a quartet of young designers, uses their skills to make things people actually need. Namely, they design 3D-printed parts to repair commonly broken objects.

Did you lose or break the little plastic thingy on the end of the cord for your window blinds? Is the bracket holding the mudguard on your bike starting to fade? Do you have a tripod made by Manfrotto, which suffers from that manufacturer’s prone-to-breakage leg clamp? Did the little kickstand on the back of your Nintendo Switch break? Studio Extrude sells replacement parts for these items for just a few Euros.

“We repair your objects in order to extend their lifetime,” the group writes. And they’re open to suggestion: If there’s something you need a part for that they haven’t covered, “send us a photo of the broken piece and we will send you a price estimate.”

Lastly, they don’t take the act of birth new objects lightly, even if they are replacement parts. “We believe that bringing products into the world can have less of a negative impact on the environment than current practice. This is why we use recycled PLA, produced by European spool manufacturers, and print everything ourselves in the Paris region. Since recycling is not a perfect solution, we always try to print as little material as possible and upcycle other objects.”

Check out Studio Extrude here.