Rapido HF Silicone Sock Remover Tool

I swap nozzles frequently on my Voron printer with a Stealthburner + Rapido toolhead. But to get a good purchase on the nozzle with a 7mm socket, the silicone sock needs to come off, which is really difficult to do without partially disassembling the toolhead due to the tight clearance around the top of the sock. I designed this simple grabber to slip over the sock and hook onto its top surface so that it can be pulled off without needing to paw at it with any oversized fleshy appendages like some sort of Neanderthal.

How to Use

Just to be clear: do not attempt to remove the sock while the nozzle is heated. That's not what this is intended for — you will probably burn yourself and melt the tool in the process.

1. Hold the tweezers with the elbow facing down and the tweezing hooks on opposite sides of the sock. Be mindful of the location of the thermistor/heater wires!
2. Push straight up until you feel the hook tips “snap” onto the top surface of the sock.
3. Pull straight down. This requires a little bit of pulling force, but you shouldn't need to actually squeeze the tweezing arms together — it's designed so that the arms need to flex outward a bit to fit over the sock, so they're already spring-loaded.

Important note: I added small ridges near the elbow to make it easier to grip, but they're actually sort of useless. You'll probably have an easier time gripping it from the flat sides, where your gripping force won't put any strain on the flexy bits and risk snapping them.

Print Settings

I printed in ABS with the following settings, but it's not exactly rocket science. PLA or PETG would probably work just as well.

Perimeters: 4
Top/Bottom Solid Layers: 5
Infill: 40% Gyroid (with 160% extrusion width)