Xacto Blade Tower Slicer

• Updates 1/23/25 **
  • Created/differentiated a square vs rectangular shape designs (they are sorted in folders below). If you print the square version, it may not complicate scaling issues for you if you find that you have them. I recommend printing with less infill to save on filament for the square version. 15-20% infill should be sufficient. I may still do 4 walls (do at least 2!)
  • Fixed the 45 degree holder to have more space between the snap sections (it was less than 1mm before, whoops!).
  • Filleted the bases to make insertion a little easier for the towers. 
• Updates 1/21/25 *
  • designed additional holders for 30, 60 and 90 degree cuts
  • fixed the base to have .5mm gaps on all 4 sides on the inside for a tighter fit w/ glue (it wasn't all the same measurement before, idk why I did that!) 
  • removed the screw in option, seemed unnecessary. You really want to rely on attaching the base to the top and bottom for dragging this tool along a smooth surface (masonite/mdf board for example).
  • added additional pictures, look through all of them!  

Here is a design for holding an Xacto blade at various heights for slicing into clay. It's main purpose was made for work in clay, but you could adapt it for use with slicing other material, or marking things with a knife I suppose.

Things to keep in mind:

I made this for an Xacto knife that I own. It's a tight fit. I used digital calipers to design this which were a big help. Measure your own knife and use the scale piece I included to figure out the size you need.  I believe the diameter of my knife is 9mm, so I made the circular cutouts 9.25mm diameter because that is my printer tolerance to get it snug for 9mm (refer to pictures for exact measurements I took in Rhino for the design). You will want to print the test piece, or segment of the test piece before printing the tower (you can sink it into the bed a little more if you wish to speed it up). Take note of any scale changes you have made to the test piece and write that down. The test piece is an exact slice of the original file.

If you make any change in scale to the tower that holds the blade portion, you will need to make the same scale change to the base that the tower sits in. Don't forget to do that or else it will not fit. I left a .5mm gap on all sides of the holder for something like superglue to live in.

The spacing of the cuts is ~12-14mm. This is the closest I could get the inserts to sit where it felt strong enough between each snap in segment. If that space in between is too thin, it becomes too fragile to insert a tool without a segment breaking. 

• I originally printed this on a 310mmx310mm Ultrabase glass bed before I bought my Prusa MK4. Slice the STL into pieces in a program if you need to fit it to your bed or wish to modify it. 

I printed with 25% infill, 0.2mm layer height using a 0.4mm nozzle. My wall/perimeter count was 4 walls everywhere (you could probably change that if you need slightly more bend/flex). I did this so it doesn't flex while cutting with it. I assume people would be using this while the clay is near leather hard.