Telescopic pole / Expanding pole / Tension pole - Stopper

Hey team,

Expanding / Spring / Tension poles are quite common in Asia and now they are available in Australia. I lived in Japan for a few years and found these poles to be invaluable for everything from hanging clothing in cupboards, to frying pans in the kitchen. These poles are very useful for people renting or where you don't want to make a permanent fixture in the wall, or where it's too difficult eg: concrete etc. 

Now they are available widely throughout the world via Daiso, we picked up a few but found the rubber used on the caps put a lot of pressure on the walls resulting in damage over time. In our particular case one of the poles fell down and ripped paint off the wall (woops).

The model I've prepared makes use of flexible TPU and an inner ring which is depressed when pressure is applied. This allows the inner section of the stopper to take the load and spread the pressure over a much wider surface area on the wall in a uniform manner.

During testing I found just a small amount of pressure was needed to have a very strong connection and it holds far better than the original rubber stopper.

I used the Gyroid infill pattern with 15% infill as it compresses nicely.

I've attached the model and the gcode I used for printing on my MK4.

If you use Prusa slicer (version 2.6 at time of writing), you can scale the internal diameter which receives the pole to suit whatever pole size you have, I would recommend making it slightly undersized by ~ 0.2 mm so that you can get a good friction fit :-). 

In order to make the adjustment, perform the following (see images):

1. Select the pole stopper object and then the ‘Measure’ tool
2. Select the inner ring surface or, two points on the inside of the pole receiver
3. Select the small pencil icon
4. Specify a new dimension to suit your needs
5. Print away :-)

Enjoy