Door Stop Spring

thingiverse

This is a good solution to a dumb problem. My office had a really heavy hydraulic on it that allowed the door to automatically close. But, I wanted it to stay open when I was in the office. I had a simple block of wood, but that meant fumbling around with the block every time I came in / went out, so I got a door stop like this one: https://www.mcmaster.com/door-stops/lever-door-mount-holders/ Which worked great to keep the door open. However, to get the door to close, I had only bad options. I could lean over (ugh), I could try to get my size 13 shoes under the lever to prop it up (waste of time!). My first solution was to tie some string from the door handle to the lever, so I could just yank the string to get it to close. Then I remembered, I own a 3D printer. This little device is meant to house a small spring inside the cylinder. The post is 7.5 mm, so a spring that is normally about 7 mm diameter should stay on the cylinder once put into position. The device is mounted behind the lever door stop, using the same screws that hold the lever stop in place. Here's how it works. When there is no weight on the door, the spring will hold the lever just above the level of the floor. So, it swings freely. When I wanted the door open, I would use my foot to push the lever down to the floor level. The weight of the door on the lever, and the friction pad on the bottom of the lever, would keep the door open. When it was time to close the door, all that need be done is get the weight off of the lever stop; the spring would 'pop' the lever enough that it wouldn't be able to stop the door from closing. The result was that I could just pop the door like the Fonz on my way out, and the door would swing shut. The slots for the screws are long, so that you can adjust the position of the spring behind the lever door stop. You want it to be able to get the lever off the floor when the spring is at its longest, but you also don't want the spring to deform too much when the door stop is keeping the door open (or it might not 'kick' the lever properly). It's an adjustment. This worked very well for me, until I got a new office. The biggest problem was that visitors to the office would occasionally lean on the office door, causing the door lever to get kicked out of position and the door to try to close in their face.