Arms for Garbage Tongs

These replacement arms are made for garbage tongs with a joint distance of ~42mm (the distance between the joints around which the arms rotate). If your joint distance is larger or smaller, the arms might be closed or opened too much.

The design consists of an outer part to be printed with normal filament (PLA/PETG/...) and an inner pad to be printed with a soft material so you have some grip (I used TPU 95A which is fine, but you have to press really hard on slippery objects). Ziptying a random piece of rubber around the arms might actually be a better idea than using the provided pads.

What you'll need

• 2 M4x25mm screws with two nuts each to replace the rivets which act as joints for the arms
• 1 3mm x 15mm rod which is used to connect the puller and the arms. You can use the original one if you still have it, but I lost mine. I used an M3 screw where I cut the head off.

Dis- and reassembly
Glue the pads onto the the outer arms if you want to use them. Drill out the rivets holding the arms in place. Put in the rod connecting the new arms and the puller. You might have to detach the cable from the lever in order to do so, but that will make it very hard to put the cable back into the lever. Finally, put in the screws which act as joints for the arms and secure them with two nuts each.

Printing
Print the arms with support structures everywhere (not just touching build plate). 15% infill should be fine.

Print the pads with a soft material. Dont use supports. Wall line count and infill depends on your material (for TPU 95A I used 3 walls and 15% infill, but I would recommend a softer material)