What to do when the BadgerPlug insert (that plastic thingy you stick into the end of a roll of paper that helps suspend it in a dispenser) breaks.
I recently ran across this when a student asked for a large piece of paper for a project he was working on. I successfully unrolled the paper and tore it off using the dispenser’s cutter and handed it to the student. Then I returned to the dispenser and wondered why the roll of paper was sitting somewhat wonky in there. I discovered the missing plug at one end of the roll.
Not one to be content with a wonky roll of paper in the dispenser, I pulled the other plug out to see if there was any useful information on there. Turns out that the manufacturer as well as a part number were clearly embossed on the side. Cha-ching, I thought. After a bit of internet searching, I found the company and noodled around looking for a downloadable CAD file that I could 3-D print. No luck with that so I emailed customer service asking if something like what I was looking for was available.
A very nice customer service rep replied surprisingly quickly to inform me that they did not have a downloadable design available but they could send me replacements via snail mail. I took her up on her offer but I still had a wonky paper roll until the replacements arrived. At this point I looked at the one remaining plug and thought, I can design this and 3-D print it myself. After about a fractured hour or so of work in TinkerCAD, I created a design that I thought would do the trick. A bit more tweaking to fine tune dimensions and presto, I had my replacement end plug for my wonky roll of paper!
Here’s an image of the object I designed in TinkerCAD:
Here’s the 3-D printed version next to the remaining original:
And the final installation:
