Work / Hardware

Technical details
Part: carabiner — a 60 x 34 x 6 mm ring, 5 mm band. A 28 mm opening in one long side is closed by mechanisms.leaf_spring: a 1.2 mm gate rooted in the ring at one end of the opening, bowed 1.5 mm outward, its free tip resting in a mouth at the other end under a 1.5 mm lip. Push the gate inward with a thumb and the tip swings out from under the lip, opening the ring for a key ring, a strap or a bottle loop; let go and it springs back. Anything pulling outward on the gate presses the tip harder into the lip, so it cannot open by accident.
Printed flat on the bed. The gate and the ring are one solid (the root is buried 2.5 mm into the ring); the tip clears the mouth by 0.4 mm along the gate and 0.35 mm under the lip, so it prints free without support. Gate root strain at 3 mm tip deflection is about 0.6%: fine in PETG, and PLA survives it for casual use (keys), not for hundreds of cycles a day.
Not load-bearing: keys, a water bottle, a lanyard. Never for climbing or anything holding a person.
Assumptions (user unavailable): ring proportions chosen for a thumb on the gate and two fingers through the ring; 6 mm depth so the gate is a 1.2 x 6 beam; no keyring hole (the ring is the loop).
Parts
| Part | Size (mm) | Volume | Thinnest wall | Printability |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| carabiner | 60 × 34 × 6 | 4.1 cm³ | 1.17 mm | passes |
Engineering views
Downloads
- carabiner.stepSTEP · 159 KB
- carabiner.stlSTL · 90 KB
- flex_carabiner.3mfwhole plate · 24 KB
Library parts used
Parametric components shared with the other designs; see the parts library.
| Component | What it does | Printed in |
|---|---|---|
Leaf springmechanisms.leaf_spring | Bowed leaf spring (circular-arc beam) between two points on the X axis, bulging toward +Y; standing on z=0. | not yet |
Source: models/flex_carabiner · built 2026-09-18 01:25
Compliant key carabiner
A key clip whose gate is a printed leaf spring: press it in to open, let go and it springs shut.
One solid, no pin, no metal spring. The gate's tip rests under a lip, so pulling on the keys presses it closed rather than open. For keys, lanyards and water bottles, not for anything that holds a person.
- Size
- 60 × 34 × 6 mm
- Print plate
- 60 × 34 × 6 mm
- Parts
- 1
- Filament (PLA)
- about 5 g
- Print time
- about 0.5 h
- Status
- Ready to print
Want it in another size, colour or material? Say so in the request: fitting it to your object is a $5 adjustment, and you see the revised design before it's printed.
Measure it, describe it, and we'll draw it.
Requests take a few minutes. You'll get the design and a price back before anything is printed.
