3D printed spare wheel for our dishwasher

Recently, a guidance wheel of our dishwasher went missing. This led to the tray of the dishwasher getting out of control if in movement. Clearly, we needed a solution.

Luckily, we own two Ultimaker 2 and a Formlabs Form 2. Therefore, printing spare parts is no problem. We hit up the 3D printing division and got cracking. A short search for “Siemens dishwasher” on Thingiverse led to results. We therefore had the model, the next step was to print the wheel.

We decided to print the wheel on our SLA printer, the Formlabs Form 2 - a fatal decision as we would see later. The print took about an hour, washing and curing the part consumed an additional hour.

A first iteration was done. We assembled and installed the guidance wheel. It lasted about three seconds, after which it snapped into two parts. The material of the Formlabs Form 2 is very hard, but not very elastic. The mounting bracket could just not withstand the bare force of the dishwasher tray.

We reprinted the mounting bracket on our Ultimaker 2 using PLA PRO, a material with properties similar to ABS. PLA PRO is a bit more elastic, therefore it is a good choice for such a bracket. The new bracket was installed together with the wheel of the previous iteration.

The symbiosis of the two materials in one dishwasher wheel leads to astonishing results. The dishwasher tray now stays in its guidance and slides smoothly. Concluding, the spare part works as intended.

If you are searching for spares yourself, head over to thingiverse.com and look up your parts. You may be lucky as somebody may have already created a model. We can print your models, just head over to our 3D printing service and drop your oder or hit us up at if you have any questions.