Tiny, ultra tough rope tensioner

Description

Use case

Print a solid number of these tiny tensioners for your next camping trip, to make sure you have plenty of them if you need them. At 1.75g per piece, it will not be a burden, even if you are on a hiking or biking trip. Print them at the most bright and shiny color you have, to find them easily if you should drop them.

Despite it's tiny size, each tensioner can withstand more than 50kg (500N) of pulling force when being used with a 3mm paracord (not tested with other kind of ropes). That should be much more than you will be able to achieve manually and much more than your tent peg can handle anyway. But even when the tensioner (made of PETG) gives in, which is around 600N, it will not break but only bend, so that the rope can slip out of the lower hook and then of the middle hook as well. The part might be slightly deformed, but is still usable after that (which might be important if you are out in the wilderness and have no replacements).

How to tension the rope

Simply hook in the rope into the middle hole. Leave the other hole unused for now. The tensioner will already be able to lock the rope and take quite some force. By grabbing the tensioner on the closed hole, you will be able to move it towards “tighter” on the rope. Once you achieved your desired pulling force, hook in the lower hook into the rope to secure everything. If you tighten the rope really heavily, it may be hard to hook in the looker hook, but in that case it is actually not even needed.

When used with 3mm paracord, the cord will not fall out, even if there is no tension on the line for a moment.

Printing

Printing this part is very easy. All testing was done with PETG, which is more flexible than PLA and will rather bend and give the rope free than to break. I am sure the part works well in PLA as well, but it might break when overloaded.

Place as many of the parts as you want on your print bed in the uploaded orientation. To print several at a time is sensible, as each layer will have more time to cool down before the next is added. That leads to cleaner parts. Strong layer-to-layer adhesion is not needed for this part anyway. No brim or supports are needed. I recommend 4 perimeters and 100% infill to make the parts strong.