This is a 3D printed no touch tool designed to open doors and touch stuff without using your hands, thus protecting you from the coronavirus.

The tool can grip round knobs and door levers, as well as pushing doors open and picking up articles.

Supplies

30 m of PLA

a 3mm bolt 6mm long

some contact adhesive

Step 1: The Design

The tool can be used with one hand, using the closed jaws to push doors open or grip a handle, turn a knob, of pick up something. Holding the main handle in your hand, it is quite easy to use some of your fingers to open and close the jaws by manipulating the second, smaller handle.

The cavity of the bigger handle has a swivelling door to use it for storage.

The design uses only six parts, which fit together quite easily. All that is needed extra is a 3 mm bolt to fix the door to the main handle, and some contact adhesive to fix the pins together around which the jaws/handles swivel, and to fix the main handle to the stem of its jaw. Contact adhesive is also smeared on the gripping surfaces to enable good grip.

Step 2: Printing the Parts

Printing is easy because the design of the parts is quite simple. I found both rafts and supports were necessary for the three biggest parts, the two jaws and the main handle.

Printing the two jaws standing upright on the their tips was the easiest (first picture) . It also uses the least material for rafts and supports.

Printing all of the parts at 0.2mm should take about 8.5 hours. You'll use about 30 m of PLA, and the resulting tool should weight about 90 g.

I've attached the six STL files for the five parts.

Because the main handle is printed on its own, you can design your own if you want to. The size of the cavity for fitting the stem of the jaw is 9.5 mm high, 10 mm wide and 20 mm deep/long (second picture).

Step 3: Assembly

Assembly should be painless. First slide the lower jaw through the upper jaw so that the openings for the pins line up. Then fix them together with the pins. The main handle can then be slid onto the stem of the lower jaw, and the door fixed to the back of the handle with a 3 mm bolt (second picture).

A dab of glue on the inside pin and on the stem of the lower jaw should fix them permanently in place.

A thin layer of contact glue or rubber compound should be smeared on alle the gripping surfaces (third picture) to ensure grip. If using contact adhesive, which is both cheap and easy to come by, let it dry for a few hours to prevent the jaws from sticking together.

Your no touch tool should now be ready to use. Remember to disinfect the tool regularly.