Three Broken Brackets, or a Whole New Towel Rail?

On a heated towel rail, the plastic wall mounts are usually the first thing to go. When all three fail, there is a question worth asking: do you buy a new rail, drill fresh holes in the tile and leave the old ones on show for good, or do you have three mounts printed?

The broken part is the drawing. We 3D scanned it and reverse engineered the mount from that scan, so the replacements match the original where they meet the tube and keep the hole spacing that is already in the wall. Before anything was printed, the rebuilt part was laid back over the scan to confirm the two agreed. Nothing had to be adapted, and nothing new drilled.

Everything else about the customer's rail was sound: the S-shaped tube, the heating element, the cable and the connection. Three small plastic parts were the only reason the whole thing would have gone in the skip.

Material choice matters here. Everyday PLA is the wrong plastic for something that gets warm and carries weight at once: it begins to soften and creep somewhere around 55 to 60 degrees. These mounts sit on a heated tube, so they were printed in heat resistant ASA.

If something of yours is perfectly good apart from one broken plastic part, get in touch. Send a photo and we will tell you whether it is printable.