2-in-1 3D Printed Bottle Opener

This 2-in-1 3D printed bottle opener could make your life easier. Its meant to make bottle opening easier, whether its a bottle with a screw cap or with a crown cork. To make it aesthetically pleasing I chose to go for a unique design and to print it with two colours. The simple design was meant to be slim, but still strong enough to do the job.

To print the 2-in-1 bottle opener I used regular PLA filament. In order to make the bottle opener strong enough I printed with the following settings:

- 5 perimeters

- 6 solid top and bottom layers

- 70% infill

It took me quite some experimenting to get the bottle opener strong enough, so I hope these settings will work for you as well.

The first layer I printed extra slowly. This is important to do, since otherwise the little teeth of the screw cap opener wouldn't stick to the bed. For the rest you can print it on regular speed.

The two color printing was done by simply pausing the print during the 9th layer (out of 25 for me), moving the extruder up by three centimeters or so, changing the filament (in my case to black) and letting it run through until the colour was completely changed, and finally lowering the extruder to let the print continue. It is advisable to do this when it is busy printing some of the infill, so that the change of filament isn't visible in the final product.

Obviously the bottle opener can be used for two different types of bottle cap types. The use for the crown cork is pretty straight forward. You have to place the little hook under the edge of the crown cork, place the lever point near the centre of the cork, and finally use the opener as a lever with the palm of your hand to open the crown cork.

For the screw cap it easiest to use it as shown in the pictures (with the green side up). This is because it costs much more energy to open the bottle with the black side up. With the green side up the bottle opener requires much less hand power, since it will partially lock itself when you start to turn it. This will not happen when the black side is up. This may not be a problem for many people, but for elderly people it may be. Therefore it is advised to use it with the green colour up.

If you feel like my design can be improved feel free to do so! It took me a lot of experimenting with the design and thickness of the body of the opener in order to get it right. The photos show what I mean : ) The second photo shows the designs I went through (in an orderly fashion) with the top left being my first design and the two on the bottom right being my last designs.