Toothpick Handle by ThingHuxter

Last crawled date: 3 years, 1 month ago

What does the 3D printing community do to clear the perf-boards some printers use as print beds when the item is putty-knifed off the perf-board leaving dozens, sometimes hundreds of little beads in the holes?
I have experimented with paper clips, tweezers with sharp points, needles, but the only thing I've found to consistently push out those little dots is a hardwood toothpick with square sides and pencil-points.
These can be strong enough to push out the most stubborn hanger-on, but they wear over time. Good news! They're very very cheap, and you have two ends, so when one frays or breaks, just turn it around and keep going.
However, I have found that holding one of these toothpicks with the strength needed to perform the task causes me blisters. So I came up with this, probably my most useful print to date, and simplest to make:
The Toothpick Handle.
This basically makes a toothpick into an awl, so you can easily and repetitively remove those little beads from your perf board.
I put the board on a pottery cup (I made myself back in the 1990s) and place the board upside down on it and push the little beads down into the bowl for later disposal.
The trick with this handle is - cut the toothpick in half and put the other half aside until needed. Shove the toothpick into the square hole in the awl where (if your printer yields the same results mine does) the toothpick fits very snugly and won't come out until you pull it out.
Then, as I push a bunch of beads out, I tap the board with the handle like a small mallet to break the static hold the beads tend to have on the board. They drop into my pottery bowl and voila!
It helps to do this while listening to music, or your favorite radio talk show, or even videos, as long as you don't really need to see the action.
Feel free to alter this, to share and spread it freely as you see fit. As I offered it up for free, please don't make money on it without giving ME some. :-)
And if you do plan to make a fortune off it as the latest cool gadget that's selling millions on the internet, call me and we can work out a percentage deal. :-)