Poor Man's Flap Wheel

prusaprinters

<p><i>Tips are appreciated and go towards creating new designs</i></p><p>Flapwheels are pretty neat. Depending on the grit they can remove material fast, or finish a surface quickly. They can be used on irregular shapes, curves, holes and other places where conventional powersanding tools have a hard time getting to. They last a fair while, too.<br>Problem is, those things average at 5-10$ per piece, which is quite expensive even if they last a while.</p><p>So I figured, let's make a simple poor man's version which uses regular sandpaper. Sure, the given design doesn't remove as much material as quickly, nor does it last as long as a proper flapwheel, but it's a heck of a lot cheaper. For the price of one real flapwheel you can print one or two of these poor man's flapwheels AND get at least half a dozen sheets of sandpaper which you can use with this contraption. It'll take longer to use, but it's definitely cheaper.</p><p>So what I designed here is basically a clamp using two M3 nuts and two M3x10mm countersunk screws to clamp a folded piece of sandpaper and which you can chuck into a drill. Super simple to use and works quite well.</p><p>Pros:</p><ul><li>Super cheap</li><li>Can be used in forward and reverse, unlike traditional flapwheels which can only go in one direction</li><li>Because it only has two fans and they're rather flexible, you can spin it up and 'dive' into a hole, not only sanding the inside but automatically chamfering the edge</li></ul><p>Cons:</p><ul><li>Less sandpaper fans, so it's slower than traditional flapwheels</li><li>Changing the sandpaper takes a minute and needs a screwdriver</li><li>Need to prepare replacement sandpaper pieces</li></ul><p>&nbsp;</p><p><strong>Print Notes:</strong></p><p>You shouldn't need any rafts, brims or supports with these files, they're super easy to print. At most the bottom part might use a 3mm brim if youre having some adhesion problems, but other than that there should be no need.</p><p>I've chamfered the edges of the design, so you shouldn't need to do any real post-processing either. Just print, assemble and you're ready to go!</p><p>The resolution isn't that important, 0.2mm will probably work just fine. Infill isn't critical either. I do recommend using 4-5 shells though, to give it a bit more stability.</p><p>PLA ist just fine, you don't need any super strong or resistant materials. The parts aren't under that big of a load during use anyway.</p>