Rev's Rediculous Rectangular Rubber Retainer

Shortly before dinner, my wife walks in to my office and tells me “Ok, printing request. These tongs lost the little clip thing and won't stay closed. Dinner's in 20 minutes.”

Already reaching for my calipers, I got tunnel vision and opened TinkerCAD.

As we sat down to eat, I handed her a pile of TPU bands. “OK, which one is your favorite?”

Three different designs, based around a .4 nozzle @ .2 layer height. The dimensions are such that your printer (with Arachne at least) will simply make four perimeter passes for each band.

You can probably scale them up to match any size tongs.

The plain deign is just a simple 5mm tall box with rounded edges. It's basically a pre-formed rubber band.

I added to that a little 1.2mm triangle to act as a retainer to prevent the band from flying off unexpectedly, catching on the inside of the tongs at the back. Being TPU, a gentle squeeze is all it takes to pop it off.

Not fully satisfied though, I made one with a pyramid instead of a triangle, so it'd be easier to slip on and off. As a bonus, it actually catches in the rivet so it can be retained on the tongs during use.

Printed in eSun Natural TPU 95A. Quick and clean print. 

(She liked the triangle version, by the way.)