Reversible Ratcheting Screwdriver

prusaprinters

It's my turn again.I wanted to design a reversible ratchet that worked without moving an axle. I wanted it to be as small as possible and I wanted to keep the aesthetic of my first screwdriver keychain.This is what I've got.It's 50 mm tall and 20 mm in diameter. It holds six 4 mm bits inside and the ratchet reverses by turning a switch. When printing, make sure your bed is perfectly level. There are three very small parts that would cause the mechanism to not work properly if they have elephant's foot. This design was made for a 0.4 mm nozzle at 0.2 mm layer height. I've had success with different brands of PLA, but I've found PLA+ to work best: the switch is smoother and the clicking of the ratchet is more satisfactory. Assembly After printing, carefully free the springs at the top of the handle. This should be fairly easy to do. They will hold the switch in place after assembly.  Place the ratchets and the spring like shown, followed by the toothed shaft. Now for the tricky part: press the housing switch until it snaps into place. You might have to wiggle it a bit to make it fit over the ratchet mechanism and a little force will be needed for the snap fit to fall into place.This top part (in yellow in the figure) allows you to select which direction the ratchet will turn. Just rotate it to align the arrows to that little bump on the handle. And that's it! The bottom part just screws into the handle. If you have any problems or better ideas to improve the design, please let me know.  ContextUpon seeing my previous screwdriver model, FreddyZ thought it would be better if it had a ratchet mechanism. When I said it was too small for that, he took it as a challenge and created his excellent design. After FreddyZ, LoboCNC also took up this (unintended) challenge and blessed us with an incredible design of a reversible ratchet screwdriver.And the best part, the story didn't end there. Others were inspired and created their own designs and even FreddyZ and LoboCNC came back with more awesome versions of ratcheting screwdrivers. This is my approach at a reversible ratcheting screwdriver. I hope you like it.