Paper Clip Assortment

For when you're in a panic because you forgot to buy paper clips before your big exam or if you're just looking to add a bit of style to your stacks of paper, these 3D printable paperclips are easy to print, reliable, and add a bit of style to whatever you decide to use them on!

Variations

This model features 6 different varieties of paperclips, and each one comes in a short, medium and long size. All of them are based on the common paperclip size standards. 12mm or 0.47in wide, and then 28mm or 1.1 inches for the short length, 33mm or 1.3 inches for medium length, and 51mm or 2 inches for the long length. The designs are all also centered around being 1.6mm wide in most areas to match exactly 4 nozzle widths on a 0.4mm nozzle to reduce print time and remove the need for infill entirely in most cases.

Some further explanations of the 6 different variations below:

Stylized:

The first design I created, the intention being that it resembles a normal paperclip but is a bit more stylized and functional. The goal also being to aim for exactly 4 nozzle widths throughout on a 0.4mm nozzle

Efficient:

The efficient style was an evolution of the stylized design with an intention of fully leveraging the idea of “exactly 4 nozzle widths” and creating a paperclip that can be printed with minimal travel and therefore time wasted. This design is a fair bit more flimsy but still works very well and prints the fastest.

Filled:

An evolution of the efficient design that adds a small amount of bridging infill in the middle segment to stiffen the part of the flexible part on the efficient design. It adds more printer time but results in a unique look and is quite a bit more rigid.

Classic:

Exactly as one might expect, this design attempts to emulate a classic paperclip, fitting into the exact same footprint and functioning about as well, however, this means that this design is one of the less effective ones at actually holding paper together. However, similarly to the efficient design, it prints very fast due to its simplicity.

Hollow:

A variation on the efficient paperclip style that is both a bit less flimsy and also has a larger surface area that grabs the paper.

Owl:

This clip design takes inspiration from commercially available plastic paperclips alongside the original owl design by having the clip be more arrow-shaped with two tapering ends. Functioning similarly to the hollow design, it benefits from a larger area of surface grabbed and the two tapered ends ensure a good strong grab that holds the paper together, but this design takes much longer to print than the rest.

Print settings

Your standard print settings will likely work just fine for this design, it takes less than 5 minutes to print even the larger clips so if there are issues you can likely tune your settings for better results if need be. The models are tuned for a multiple of 0.4mm nozzle widths so either a 0.4mm or 0.8mm nozzle is required. However, the latter may struggle on variations that have infill sections like the filled or owl designs

Nozzle width: 0.4mm (or 0.8mm, but this may yield poor infill results on variations with infill sections)

Print speed: 60mm/s should work just fine, 30mm/s if you're looking for precision. Faster printers that can reliably handle those speeds should also be fine, these parts are so small that surface defects aren't really an issue

Walls: Ideally 4 walls minimize the need for infill in most of the variations and leverage the consistent 1.6mm widths used in most of the lines on the models. 2 walls will also work but may take longer to print due to more infill area.

Layer Height: 0.2mm

Top and Bottom Layers: 4 top, 4 bottom

Infill: N/A (unless you use a different top and bottom layer setting than above, in which case use 50% or 100%)