Dishwasher controlpanel button hinges

prusaprinters

<p>These little levers connect the frontpanel buttons of the dishwasher with the little pushbuttons inside the beige box visible on the photo.</p><p>The original hinges had broken off because the plastic had gotten brittle after about 15 years.</p><p>The little green plastic pieces were printed in PLA on my pretty badly adjusted printrbot simple (this was 2013) and were mounted using superglue (cyanoacrylate / CA glue). The horrible print quality did not hinder the function in any way and the dishwasher worked happily for several more years afterwards. (It's been replaced in the meantime. The fixed buttons worked to the end.)&nbsp;</p><p>I'm not mentioning the model number because I've found basically the same mechanical construction in multiple dishwashers. I'm not even certain which brand it was, the devices are sold in Germany under at least 3 different brand names, including Siemens, Constructa and Bosch, I believe.</p><p>The funniest part about this repair was that most people had a completely different mental model of what kind of part would have needed replacement when I mentioned my fixed dishwasher in discussions about the usefulness of 3d-printing.</p><p>I also found it interesting, that the shape of these parts was only inspired by the original parts and the hinge mechanism needed a very different implementation for 3d printing – the hinge is basically a single layer of material in these.</p>