Dishwasher Bottom Rack Replacement Wheel (Kenmore)

thingiverse

We have a 5-6 year old (?) Kenmore Elite Dishwasher, Model Number 665.12785K310. It's held up well overall but eventually the bottom rack wheels, which have little "snap in" hubs that hold them in place, get unsnapped. If you don't notice, and one or more wheels / hubs falls into the bottom heating element (there are 8 total of each)....hello melted stinko. And of course the rack just doesn't travel right without all of them. It took me SEVERAL(PLUS ONE) tries to come up with a hub part that worked. At first I kept trying to emulate the ones that were there, but with some 'flex slots' in the narrow diameter shaft, that you printed with the cylindrical axes 'up' on your plate, like the wheels. But while the wheels survive the dishwasher heat cycle just fine (I'm printing in PLA), the hub parts were just too fragile/brittle and would snap, or yield, and you'd be back to the drawing board with a wheel that fit but wasn't locked in. I finally discarded mimicing the hub that was there and designed a sectioned part you could print FLAT for better in-print-plane strength. DUH! There are TWO hub parts here, one 1mm longer than the other. The shorter one snaps in but not sure if it will contract after heating, and hold too tight on the wheel so it doesn't turn as freely as it should. The _p1 file is the 1mm longer one. I may mod the 'engagement tooth' to be a little deeper after a few cycles and re-upload, if needed. EDIT - the tooth did need deepening, but the split nature of the old flat hub part (taking a section out of a cylinder) was also too weak and got fragile again after just a couple wash cycles. So I've reconnected it at the end and beefed it up again. This one looks a little ....male.... unfortunately. It takes some SERIOUS effort at least for me to push in to full snap-lock depth. But I think it should be stronger than anything else I've tried yet, and it seems to let the wheel roll smoothly on the door still. Deleted the weak parts (both normal and 'n1' lengths - the part length now might be a tad longer than needed BUT takes so much effort to 'snap' in, it ain't coming out....