Dishwasher rack repair struts for Maytag JetClean

The rolling rack in these dishwashers is made of wire and is plastic coated. After use and abuse, the plastic coating gets broken, water is introduced to the steel wire structure and that structure rusts. If you let it go, pieces can break and fall out. The risers or tines can also break off. The rusty metal portions can stain your dishes. Replacement racks are either unavailable or extremely expensive. The struts provided here lie across existing members and bridge gaps which are caused by the breakage. For cases where a riser or tine (which supports a plate in a nearly vertical configuration) breaks off, one is included here which fits in a hole in the struts, a hole which otherwise is used to fit the strut over an existing tine.

Some (all?) of the objects need to be mirrored in the slicer in order to produce all of the pieces necessary to cover all of the left/right struts in the rack.

We printed this in ASA for thermal stability. ASA is NOT considered food safe, but I am not worried about it for this application.

Print Settings

Printer Brand:

Creality

Printer:

**Supports:**

No

Infill:

**Filament Material:**

ASA

Notes:

In our dishwasher and the way we run it, PETG is not sufficiently thermally stable and I had to use ASA. I used 100% infill to make the parts as sturdy and stable as possible. Print the struts upside down. For the riser, we had to print it vertically with a few painted-on supports. I couldn't get it to print well horizontally, but that would be better for strength; having the layer lines along its length. [update 3/1/2025: the riser printed vertically broke along the horizontal layer lines... as expected. We re-printed it nearly horizontally using supports and now it is much stronger. The print is not as nice, but it is working. The riser was epoxied into the strut.]

Post-Printing

For a severely corroded rack, we first sanded off rusty parts and coated them with vinyl "liquid electrical tape". The struts are placed (left/right) over the existing rack. Any replacement risers or tines are epoxied into the new struts. The tips of the existing tines, which tend to get rusty, were sanded, coated with the vinyl and covered with little plastic tips which we bought from that largest of online retailers.

How I Designed This

This was designed by taking measurements from the existing rack. The struts fit over and are supported by existing left/right running struts and have a cut-out for this purpose. There are also cutouts for the forward/back running struts and holes for the tines. The design was executed in cadquery and the cadquery python file is provided so that you can make modifications. Racks from other similar dishwashers would surely need different cut-out sizes, strut lengths, hole sizes, distances between holes, etc.

Category: Kitchen & Dining