If you’re just coming here to download the 3D model, here you go.

A few months ago, our beloved breadmaker developed a fault. The plastic latch that holds the seed dispenser closed had snapped in half. A bit of Googling indicated that this was a common fault, caused by the constant heat cycling it experiences above the oven.

Thankfully, Panasonic offers spares for its breadmakers, so it’s possible to buy a genuine seed dispenser assembly on its own at a reasonable price, but I came across someone else who had 3D-printed a stainless steel replacement and thought I could have a go too. They had used Shapeways, and it had been possible to buy a replacement direct from Shapeways based on their model, but Shapeways were mid-collapse when I was looking at it, so it wasn’t really possible to make a new order on there.

I’d not used CAD before but I wanted to learn, and I’d watched enough videos of Martin Molin struggling to design a marble machine in Fusion360 to be dangerous, so I glued the original part back together and started measuring. I knew those cheap digital calipers I bought on a whim during a recreational hardware shop trip would come in handy eventually!

Eventually I had sketched out the dimensions and turned my sketches into a single solid object in Onshape. The next step was to find somewhere that would do stainless steel 3D printing.

I spent a morning uploading my file to various suppliers, and found the cheapest option to be IN3DTEC. I ordered the part for SLM printing in 316L stainless steel. The total came to USD 4.11 for the part, and USD 24.00 for delivery. I got a 6% new user discount, so the total came to USD 27.86 - within a couple of pounds of ordering the replacement assembly (priced at £20.76 as of writing this)!

If you’re doing this, make sure to prepare a drawing of the part that indicates how it fits into the mechanism, plus photos of the original part and the space that it sits in. I got an email from IN3DTEC after ordering, asking if I could provide this information to help inform them on how to print it.

The part arrived 15 days later, and was a good fit. I found that the end of the ‘hook’ was a little too high, a little too rough, and/or a little too sloped, but that was quickly resolved with a trip to the repair shop, where a rotary tool was available to grind down the end. The measurements I took were pretty accurate, and used to constrain the model’s dimensions, so I think the issue was caused at least in part by the difference in finish between the smooth plastic original and the sandblasted steel replacement - though the edge is also definitely sharper in the model than it was on the injection-moulded plastic original.

Over six months later, the latch is still working great, and I also get the satisfaction of knowing it won’t break any time soon. I’d definitely recommend doing this, as even a brand new replacement assembly will presumably experience the same fault eventually.

The latch is publicly available as an Onshape document; you can find it here. Feel free to modify it to adjust the hook.

There’s also another publicly-available model that I only just discovered while Googling for this article today, available here on Thingiverse.