Ear Saver (from Covidstop.ca) by The_West_Lab

Last crawled date: 3 years, 3 months ago

This is the STL for the 'ear saver' that was freely available on the covidstop.ca website earlier this year. The website no longer provides links to the file (I'm pretty sure I have attributed the original source via the remix), but I am printing these for quite a few people locally and have had requests from distant friends. Thus, I thought it was valuable to have a public record of the design and my print profiles to help others make these at high quality. I particularly liked this design versus others I trialled because it is a little more flexible, but still holds up pretty well to physical abuse.
NOTE: I am putting print instructions here, because Thingiverse does not properly parse paragraphs in the print settings section below.
Any PET/CPE blend works really well for these, because it will remain flexible for much longer than PLA. It will also hold up very well to repeated alcohol sanitisation, which is important in a laboratory setting.
I really like BASF Ultrafuse PET because it prints beautifully at low temperatures achievable by any printer (210-220°C hotend, 65-70°C bed). Colorfabb XT also works very well if your printer can reach the required temperatures. I print at the top end of the recommended range (260°C hotend, 70-75°C bed) on both the Ender 3 and Ultimaker S3 with no cooling fan to maximise layer adhesion and flexibility. For any other PET/CPE filament, just run a little hotter and with less cooling than your usual settings.
These print easily to glass or smooth PEI, although keep the first layer slow (15-20 mm/s) to ensure the 'nubbles' print properly. Because of how the ear savers flex, they can be a real pain to remove from spring steel or other flexible build surface. So like for all PET/CPE, use a glue stick, z-offset, or similar method to prevent over-adhesion.
NOTE: My Ender 3 Cura profile for Colorfabb XT is included as a guide only and should be used with extreme caution. My printer is heavily modified; temperature, retraction, speed and offset settings are unlikely to be suitable for anybody else's printer. The Ultimaker profiles should be more consistent and reliable, but still, please use caution.