Broken extruder holder - why this orientation?

We just noticed that both of our machines had a crack in the same 3D-printed part (the one that holds the extruder on the x-carriage).

I already contacted support, so no worries there but i got to wondering why its printed in this orientation? Its prone to snap along the print lines (just like it did) especially because it is experiencing the most force along the z-axis when probing and pulling on filament and from shocks when shipping. Since we are traveling a lot with the machines, i’m thinking about reprinting in a different orientation myself but first I’ll wait for replacement parts.

Did you have similar failures happen?
Are those parts printed in ABS and could be strengthened by Vapor smoothing?

https://imgur.com/a/FeHPe

I’m having a couple of parts snap on mine. Honestly it just looks like they printed at a higher resolution and a low infill to print parts quickly and cheaply. My suggestion is when you get this fixed, print out a bunch of spare parts with a higher resolution and a higher infill. That will at least make the prints stronger. Unless there was some reason I can’t fathom for printing those parts at the level they did.

It is printed in that orientation so that it does not require support to be printed. The cracks usually happen due to impacts on the extruder body and hidden layer bonding flaws during the part printing process.