Bike tire lever - easy to print

I needed a tool to change a tire on my bicycle. The design from emac looks great but it's not easy to print. Which ever orientation you put it on the bed, it will require supports. I wanted it to print on the side to use the strength of the layers at my advantage.

I extruded the profile of the shape in OpenSCAD and cut holes on the end of the handle.

Normally, you print those in pair. You work your way in the tire with one and attach it to the wheel spokes while working with the other one.

I printed it using PLA. Many will say that's a bad idea, but so far I have been very impressed with PLA strength. This will probably push the plastic to its limits, we will see...

UPDATE [2017-09-08]: It turns out that PLA is strong enough to do the task. Using stronger material would be overkill.

NOTE: I also printed gaarden's tire lever https://www.thingiverse.com/thing:12362 . I prefer mine; it's larger so it has a better grip on the tire. But it's just a personal preference, both works very well.

Is it a plane? Is it a racing car? No! It's a tire lever...

Print Settings

Printer Brand:

Prusa

Printer:

Rafts:

No

Supports:

Resolution:

0.2

Infill:

Notes:

After printing, soften the edge with sand paper so they are not too sharp for the tire.

I decided to go with 6 top / bottom layers + 6 perimeters instead of increasing the infill. I have seen many tests demonstrating that the infill doesn't increase strength as mush as we would think. Also, the part's weakness is in the tip, which is almost solid when using 6 perimeters.

How I Designed This

I loaded emac's STL file in OpenSCAD, painted it black, look at it from the side and made a screenshot. That was to get the profile of the shape.

I loaded the screenshot in Gimp (software similar to Photoshop) and removed everything but the shape profile (select by colour, invert selection, clear).

I loaded the modified profile image in InkScape (software similar to Illustrator) and traced it using InkScape tools (Path > Trace Bitmap), then I exported it to OpenSCAD using dnewman plugin: https://www.thingiverse.com/thing:25036

I extracted the polygon from the generated OpenSCAD file and put it in my own file.

I admit this is convoluted and there is many ways to achieve the same result, or even better result using other tools. I did it that way because I have been doing similar process many times from images. Basically, I have used the tools I know.

Category: Hand Tools