DA61-01805

My uncle came to me with a broken part from his refrigerator’s ice maker. The part had been discontinued and no replacement part is available. He gave me the broken part to make a model of it and then hopefully 3D print. I decided to design a part for the laser cutter instead because it is much faster and easier to model 2.5D parts. I also briefly looked for the replacement part just in case and was unable to find it initially…

Since this was a one off part design I used OnShape to design a part that would work roughly the same way. According to my uncle the piece was simply screwed in place. After examining the broken piece it appeared to be have a tapered hole that would be locked in place with the screw on the end. I designed several layers of acrylic that would approximate the taper.

Before fabricating the part I decided to find examples of how it is mounted to the ice maker. In doing so I uncovered that the taper was not used at all and instead the arm mount is keyed on one side and locks in place with a screw. After discovering this I realized without an example part I wouldn’t be able to fabricate a replacement. I began to look for similar parts that had the same keyed mounting hole and I found one, DA61-00524A, that looks to be a direct replacement for the broken one.

Sometimes its better to just look harder for a replacement part instead of making one.