3D Printing 101: Creating a New Wheel for a Dishwasher 3D Printing to the rescue! If you pay much attention to the news, you will see all sorts of wonderful stories about the power of 3D printing, or additive manufacturing. From a German engineering team who has discovered how to forgo the assembly line and print an entire 3D car, to scientists who are working on printing a fully-functioning human heart, the prospects for 3D print are astonishing. But with all of these groundbreaking advancements, many readers who are not highly trained scientists or engineers are left wondering – what can 3D printing do for them? In response, I give you, the dishwasher wheel. A Practical Application While cleaning up my kitchen the other day, I found that one of the wheels on my dishwasher was cracked and unusable. Knowing how ordering spare parts for appliances can be a huge pain, I was not looking forward to going online, hoping to find the correct model, or, if not, waiting on hold with customer service, then paying for the part plus shipping and handling, and waiting for weeks for the part to arrive. But then it hit me, this is a great application for my Stratasys uPrint SE Plus 3D printer. The Wheel and Clip Using one of the unbroken wheels as a guide, I carefully measured each piece and plugged the calculations into Autodesk’s Inventor design software. Then, I just sat back and waited while my Stratasys uPrint SE Plus created an exact duplicate of my existing wheel. Here is a comparison of the original wheel on the left...