As we already know, the SARS-Cov-2 coronavirus responsible for the COVID-19 disease pandemic is spread by droplet route. We can catch it from another person as well as having direct contact with the things the infected person has touched. They are, among others door handles, elevator buttons, soap dispensers in public toilets etc. COVID-19 is so dangerous because we can get infected by doing the most obvious, daily activities and talking to people who are infected without knowing it.
The simplest and most obvious method of preventing the spread of COVID-19 is to completely limit contact with other people and stay at home. Unfortunately, in today’s economic reality it is simply impossible – except for people who are actually sick, people must move around, work and communicate with each other. Apart from health issues, it is impossible to temporarily turn off the economy – if for any reason someone decides to take such a step, the consequences will be incomparably greater than the coronavirus pandemic itself. I wrote more about this in one of my recent articles: “Is the COVID-19 pandemic something the 3D printing industry has been waiting for?“.
To survive a pandemic and function normally, all you need to do is follow a series of recommendations and use common sense. Use ready-made solutions that increase our security – and if for some reason it is impossible, create them yourself. In a recent article, I described 10 things worth 3D printing in the face of the COVID-19 pandemic – today we will present the eleventh…
Materialise – a leading company that provides 3D printing services and produces specialized software for the needs of additive technologies, designed easy-to-use door opener that can be 3D printed on any FDM / FFF 3D printer. The opener doesn’t require drilling holes or replacing door’s handle – its simple to make and is very useful. Setting it up is simple: you have to fasten two 3D-printed pieces together with four screws over existing handle.
Currently, this model is fit for cylindrical handles between 18 and 22 mm, but Materialise says that additional designs will be ready come soon. The design can be downloaded from here.
The design comes as one file, where both parts are stick with narrow gap between them. The door handle is well optimized for FDM / FFF 3D printing and no one using common hobby 3D printer shouldn’t have any problems making it.
We decided to use more professional desktop machine – Zortrax M200 Plus. First, we checked whether the option proposed by Materialise is in fact the best possible? We separated the models and placed one of them flat to get rid of the supports.
Materialise’s default model setting proved to be the best. In each of the variants we used the following settings:
Every iteration was prepared on Zortrax own software – Z-SUITE BETA. These were the results:
This is how finished door handle looks like…
Now we are looking for some srews to mount the handle on the door…
