The file 'Improved Wrench – No Supports! 3D Printer Model' is (stl) file type, size is 884.0KB.
I printed the fully assembled wrench by barspin, and found that the supports were very difficult to remove, and broke the wrench. It probably would have been fine if I used a well tuned PLA profile, but I wanted to use PETG. So I took a look at the file and made a bunch of modifications to make it better. Here's a list of modifications:
No more supports required! Ok almost all of them. There is one "bridge" support that can be torn off very easily by hand, since it just has a thin section connecting it. All of the original supports have been removed in favor of bridging over the gaps. That said, if your printer/ filament is bad at bridging, this may not work well.
Instead of printing the sliding part directly on top of the body, I changed it to print on top of some thin breakaway bridges. I got this idea from the print in place engine from Turbo_SunShine. This way it doesn't get fused to the body.
After using the improved wrench, I thought it would be nice to have some secondary knobs that stick out the side to help adjust it. Trying to adjust that tiny little worm gear with my fingers doesn't feel so good. So I made a version that added some knobs. Note: This version is a little harder to print, since the bridges go quite far and need to not stick to anything. I got it to work with PETG, but it wasn't super easy and took a few design changes to make it work ok. I think PLA would work better for this, and be stiffer so the knobs aren't as flexible.
Printing notes: 0.2mm layer height or smaller. 0.45mm extrusion width or smaller.
Link to onshape file: https://cad.onshape.com/documents/9848e56ffeb64ae221db1c47/w/331e104dd35f31b153a42e68/e/6fada7d5376ecedf3580c735
Improved_wrench.stl | 1011.0KB | |
Improved_wrench_with_thumb_knobs.stl | 1.3MB |