General info

This plant clamp is modelled after famous clamps that are often used to tie plant to trellises or ranking aids and designed for 3D printing.

The model consists of only one piece that flexes on itself. 

This makes it durable and resistiv against the outdoors (weather and stuff) and increases the printing speed. In fact this could also be a last-meter model or something you use as wipe print after a color change on your printer, since it doesn't need much filament.

The clip has a z-dimension of 4mm. If you want it to be more stiff or a bit larger, scale the z-dimension in your slicer, for example to something like 6-8mm. That should work to make the part a bit stiffer while still being relatively fast to print and cost effective. You can of course also scale the model in x- and y-dimension to increase the size to your needs. The standard size is ca. 40x30mm (h x w). Keep in mind that the tolerances for the flex joint and the open end (0.3mm in the standard size) will also scale and become a struggle to print when they get too small (see clearance test for your printer).

Printing

Printing should be uncomplicated, just use your standard settings with a recommended layer height between 0.2 and 0.3mm. The model has gaps of 0.3mm that are designed to be loose after printing, which should not be a problem for most printers.

As the model is designed to flex on itself, there is no need to use flexible materials such as TPU. In fact this will probably be worse since it will flex to much out of TPU. I used PLA for printing, which works quite well, but PETG would be even better as it is a bit more ductile and tough. More flexible materials than PLA might work best with the “stiffer” version of the model.

Maintenance

Should the clip become loose with time or after opening it too wide, so it doesn't transform back into it's original shape and has a gap at the open end, you can recover it's original form to some extend. Just close the sides a bit more than they would normally go by overlapping them (see picture), best once on both sides. 

Keep in mind that doing that too often will break the clip.