Margaritaville Frozen Concoction Maker Locking Base

thingiverse

A couple years ago for Father's Day my wife gifted me with the Margaritaville Frozen Concoction Maker Tahiti blender, ice shaver. It is reasonably powerful rubber-mated power blender with an overhead ice shaver. There are a couple different models but ours included a teal base and single-pitcher design. It isn't better than the ninja alternative or your typical ice-auger blender but it makes reasonably good shaved ice and is simple enough to be used by a Drunk. After a summer of pool parties, margaritas, LPR's & shaved ice for the kids, it leaks. Alot. Tequila and Lime Juice Stickiness everywhere... The plastic locking base will eventually crack, a combination of brittle plastics and over-enthusiastic tightening. I looked for a replacement pitcher: 1) They don't have an exact replacement that color matches to the machine 2) The replacements that do exist, are pretty over-priced (especially considering you can find these machines on-sale off-season for $130) A Sunk-cost situation ensues. I hate to trash it b/c it still works... I have this ~$200 blender thing, do I replace the $65 pitcher with mis-matched plastics or ... The locking base was designed to be proprietary and moderately difficult to replace with keystone locking pieces spaced at 60 degrees around the inner barrel. The screw-mating pattern that worked for me was a 21mm tall with 1030 degrees of turn sized to diameter to embed 1mm into the inside inner locking barrel and protrude at 2mm for lateral thread engagement with the pitcher. The original pitcher base cover has a decorative wave pattern decoration around the exterior bottom. The tolerances for material thickness are a little tight between the locking keystones and the clearance for the cover, so I've increased the diameter of the cover by a couple mm to allow for thicker extrusions of the material itself. It still fits the base (actually, probably a little more naturally than the original), in my case anyway. Process: (I'm a noob) I used a caliper for some of the key diameter measurements, then matte-painted and 3D scanned the original part for sizing the crucial components and re-built the models in Shapr3d on the iPad. Material notes: The threads really need supports between them. You can print it with PLA supports but getting them freed in the grooves can be a bit of a pain. The pictured example was a Kodak PLA+ with Ultimaker Breakaway supports but if you want it to be dishwasher safe, consider using Nylon as the core material. 5mm Seal is the bottom seal for the ring assembly, it is slightly thicker than the original to allow for variances in different jar/pitcher thread styles - print in TPU. Next steps: I know, OCD wants what it wants. I'll design a reasonable replacement for the lid next to it is all matchy-matchy.