Customizable Broom

Abstract

This project allows you to create a customizable brush. The brush can be entirely printed with PLA.

It allows you to put a custom tag on the handle, making this a fairly good present. Its assembly is fairly easy and should not require you to use glue.

Printing

Handle

• Download OpenScad from https://openscad.org/downloads.html
• Download the "Brush_Model_M.scad” file
• Open the file with Openscad and put the respective text into the question marks at the top (line 24):

// the name tag on the brush
tag = "your name here";

• press f6 to render the file and f7 to export it as an STL
• Open the Stl file with a slicer like Prusa Slicer and print it in PLA

Pins

• for the default brush, download “PinsX68.stl”. This will give you the 64 required pins plus four spare pins in the case that some of them break on insertion.
• Open the Stl file with a slicer like Prusa Slicer and print it in PLA
  • You can print it in FLEX, too, but it will likely give in too much when you use it
• If you need any more pins, “PinsX1.stl”, “PinsX5.stl” and “PinsX20.stl” are available, too. Arrange them in Prusa Slicer to fit the print sheet.

Assembly

• Use pliers like the ones that came with your printer to insert the pins.
• You should not need any glue, as the friction should be tight enough to hold the pins in place
  • if you do need glue, put a tiny droplet of superglue into the holes and insert the pins afterwards
• Depending on the number of pins, this should take about 20 minutes.

Further Customization

Length of the grip:

the variable you need to change it the file is 

handle_length = 50;

on the 45th line. It gives the length of the grip minus the sphere to round it off in mm.

Pin length

You may find the pins to be too short or too long, depending on your taste. In that case, go to

// variables for the little pins
pin_length = 20;

on line 26. The unit is mm. Then uncomment create_pins(20); and comment create_grip();.

More Pins:

The variable, describing how many pins to create per face is

inset_x_amount = 7;

on line 42. Note, that this may not play too nice with uneven numbers.

More Faces:

Look for

head_fn = 8;

on line 40.

Troubleshooting

• “I can't insert the pins, the holes are too small” 
  • increase the spacing a bit on line 51: spacing = 0.2;
• “The name Tag is too big”
  • increase the grip length as shown in Further Customization
• “I find the pins to be too scratchy”
  • change this diameter on line 30

// increase this diameter if the brush feels scratchy
pin_top_sphere_d = 3;

• something else
  • you are welcome to email me at [email protected]