Door handles, and anything you need to pull, are important transmission points for viruses and bacteria. So, with all the concerns about Coronavirus and COVID-19, I obviously wanted to make some handle pullers I could use outside my apartment and to give to relatives and friends to help keep them safe. I didn’t find exactly what I wanted online so this is the result of me designing my own model using LibreCAD and OpenSCAD. Here’s what the finished design looks like:
Most of all, I wanted the puller not to look sterile and medical: there’s enough anxiety around viruses already, so why add to that. For that reason I designed it to have a chunky and colourful look, with rounded corners and extra parts to fit around holes to increase the number of filament colours I could use. Also, I designed the opener to close into a case with a latching action to make sure it didn’t come open when not wanted, so as not to cause unwanted contamination.
To construct the opener from the STL files you need the opener itself, the case, the hinge inner and outer rings, and two surround rings. There’s two versions of each of the rings (round and cog-like) to give a bit more variety to the look, which can be mixed and matched. The opener simply needs placing inside the case, then insert the outer ring. With a bit of glue inside that you can then insert the inner ring.
If you’re careful with the gluing the rings will then still rotate letting you use the opener as a fidget ring too. The surround rings can then be glued into the smaller finger holes, which are positioned not to conflict with the opener when closing it up. If the latching is a bit stiff, a little light filing at the end of the opener will help. Adding a keyring loop and/or carabiner finishes the job and makes it easy to carry on a bag or belt loop. If you have big hands, making the finger holes too tight, you can just increase the X and Y scales in your slicer (keep them both the same so the holes stay circular).
To download all the STL files to make your own door puller, just click the link below to MyMiniFactory: don’t worry, the project is completely free to download and use. Also, if you want to customise the models in some other way, the LibreCAD DXF file, and the OpenSCAD file, are included there too. The OpenSCAD file includes variables for opener and case thicknesses as well, making it easy to build a thicker or thinner version with little effort. But, however you build it, take care and avoid the viruses 🙂
