A last week I noticed that my headphones felt a bit weird when I took them off. As it turns out the plastic on the sliding mechanism had broken. It was held together with a metal screw that self-tapped into a plastic hole. This plastic hole had completely shattered and was no longer holding the screw. I loaded up Fusion 360 and quickly made a CAD-model of the original part and 30 minutes later I had a 3D printed version that I could screw together.

The print itself wasn't too nice. It was printed in a pretty bad orientation, leaving a rough edge, and a few days later I decided to re-print it to make it look nicer (and add some thicker walls to better hold the screw). As I unscrewed it I noticed that the entire hole was ripped apart when I screwed in the screw.

While this might be solved with the thicker walls of the print I just had made, I also recently got some push-fit inserts for M3 screws. A few minutes later I had two more pieces printed. One with even thicker walls and one with a hole for the inserts. Currently I am using the inserts but keeping the part on hand in case I have to make a quick replacement again.

These headphones cost me SEK2700 back in 2016 and currently the price is around SEK5500. Beyerdynamics offer replacements for these parts for around SEK300 excl. shipping, but they were out of stock locally. Being able to print the parts, adding my own flair to them, and extending the lifetime of the headphones for the cost of SEK50 is fantastic. Hopefully the inserts helps extend the lifetime of them even more.