Dishwasher Hack
March 14, 2012 in 3d printing, household hack by Rob
An import plastic piece in my friends 2-year-old dishwasher had broken apart and it couldn’t function without it. It’s the lock mechanism that keeps the dishwashers door closed. My friend wanted to have it repaired but it turned out that there’s no repair shops that have these parts and you can’t order them from anywhere. He heard about my 3d printer and came to me with the dishwasher. We made 3 different prototypes of the plastic piece (all working ones). Took about two hours to make them. The last prototype we made much more robust and more simplistic than the original part.
My friend Jukka with the hacked dishwasher
The original part on the left and the printed part on the right!
Printing the third prototype
Perfect match!
If you need the same hack to this dishwasher Matsui MF654EWN I can send you a part or if you know someone with a 3d printer you can download the part from Thingiverse http://www.thingiverse.com/thing:19175
This is a really cool hack. Seen a number of hacks involving dishwashers, all different but all superb.
Do you have an email I might be able to contact you on? I have a few questions to ask.
Thanks.
Ryan
I wonder if a 3D object like this in:
http://www.josechu.com/moving_fractal/index.htm
could be easily made in a 3D printer.
I don’t mean the default moving object that you can see when you open the page, but the 3D object that you can see double clicking once on the applet. The one with 3-D fixed branches.
And you dont neeed a 3d printer for fix that XD
Plus can craft if on metal whit ordinary tools.
Sorry but this piece in the 10 years old washers was made from metal becuse it used for broken if you made it other soft materials ,seems the crap programed obsocelecence go into normal washers XD
Awesome, awesome, awesome! How many times have I wished that I had something that could do this? Great work mate!
This is so awesome!
I think you’re being a little harsh about the original design. It’s easy to make something on a 3d printer that is impossible to make.
And I doubt it took a week’s worth of work to make. More like an hour or so on Monday, try it out next thursday when a prototype machine is built, revise a bit, re-prototype and test again on Friday. Revise again on Wednesday because the door changed, update the prototype and test again on Thursday. Out for tooling and DVT prts arrive in a few weeks for the final test, then if you’re lucky and you did it all right, they don’t break it afer ther 5000th door cloe and you go to production…
But yea, I hate it when shitty plastic bits break on household appliances.
Yeah, maybe I was a little harsh on the original design but don’t you think it’s weird when you can do a more durable and less wasteful design in just two hours!?
It looks like it was a part that they had on hand for several other models of machines, due to the fact that it had a secondary hole that we can only assume was for another model–plus, it broke RIGHT on the connecting bits, which show that the area needed to be strengthened or that more likely the part was made for a machine with a lot less force being exerted on it which is why it failed.
Also, your statement of “It’s easy to make something on a 3d printer that is impossible to make.” makes my brain hurt a LOT because if it is impossible it is impossible. If you say ‘impossible to make otherwise’ but even that is a stretch as these are professional builders who have access to all the technology to make the best products available and clearly they did some corner cutting here.