Packing Tape Roller Squeegee

thingiverse

I broke off the original tape squeegee (third picture) on my packing tape roller years ago, before I owned a 3D-printer. As the roller works fine apart from that, I just lived with it. I had to tape a box recently and as I have had a printer for a while now it occured to me, that I could actually make the roller fully functional again. So I sat down, took it to pieces and reverse engineered the squeegee bit. For all of you, who may have the same problem and don't believe in the chuck away society, and think keeping things functional as long as possible is a good idea, here you can save some time, if you have the same packing tape roller like me. The pins hold the blade and tape guard in place. The squeegee itself is held in place left and right by the tabs in a cut out in the metal and a recess in the plastic. I designed it with a gradual slope and a nice spline transition into its base to keep the notch effect (that most probably killed the original part) to a minimum. I printed it in PETG, because of it's known flexibility properties and so far, it bends well and hasn't broken. I gave it four top and four bottom layers with 25% infill and support for the positioning pins. Works fine with the flat side down on the print bed.