I've had my Peter Piper pepper grinder for a very long time, somewhere between 20 and 30 years. And finally the plastic ring at the bottom broke. It's a functional part of the grinder so I needed to do something - OpenSCAD to the rescue.

The part I've made from red PLA fits my grinder nicely, held in place with the two original screws. The ring does two jobs - holds the main outer steel grinding ring in position while the inner grinding ring turns; and it stops that inner ring dropping out when I unscrew the knob on top to refill the grinder.

The measurements for the ring in the .stl file work for my grinder. There are parameters in the .scad file to fit a ring to any other grinder that uses the same basic design. (Caution - I'm still a novice with OpenSCAD so the code works, but is not foolproof - garbage numbers in will create garbage out.)

My print used 50% infill, hoping that the product will be strong enough to resist the daily wear and tear of pepper grinding. There's no science behind it, I tried it and it's working OK and has for a few days.
Update - it's still working after a few years!

Happy days - fresh ground pepper on the table again!

Print Settings

Printer Brand:

Prusa

Printer: 

I3 MK3S

Rafts:

No

Supports: 

No

Resolution:

0.2

Infill: 

50%

Filament: eSun PLA+ Any you like! Post-Printing =============

The screw holes are overhangs inside the countersink space, so may need a bit of cleaning to let the screws pass nicely. My print was almost OK, just a little poke with a knife tip got rid of the little bits of rubbish.

And now I've had a bit more practice with 3D printing I realise that in the slicer, selecting the top to be printed as the bottom will give a clean print needing no knife work.

Category: Kitchen & Dining