August 20, 2023
Description
I've been printing a lot of ABS on my Bambu X1C, and that leads to fairly frequent “clean your rods you filthy animal!” warning messages. Figuring there had to be a better way than trying to get all around the rods with my fingers, I went looking for a printable tool. Lo and behold, I found one! It was a clever design, but the handle was comically large and made it kind of difficult to maneuver in the confines of the enclosure. Also, it was only sized for the 12mm carbon rods. I figured I could modify that to better suit my needs, but it had a “no remixes” license. Gross.
So I took to tinkercad and reverse engineered the tool from scratch. My version isn't nearly as pretty, but it takes 25% less time to print, uses 55% less material, and is a heck of a lot easier to maneuver. And it's permissively licensed, so you're free to modify and improve it if you wish. I made a smaller variant specifically for the 8mm linear rods as well.
Print as provided with normal supports. Line the tool with a folded up paper towel, wet it with some IPA, and start polishing those rods!
License:
Creative Commons — Attribution
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