3D Print Your Own Clip Stick (free design)

Clip Stick Design

To print your own clip stick, check out the plans on Thingiverse.

Below, you’ll find the story and inspiration behind Rodrigo creating the clip stick (see iterations along the way) and what led him to share his design for free.

Clip Stick Story

Hi my name is Rodrigo I’ve been climbing for the last 9 years. I am a mechanical engineer who loves to improve my gear, whether it’s climbing or biking. This is what led me to become the creator of the open source compact clip stick.

Having spent most of my live in Brazil, climbing gear has always being prohibitively expensive. Combine this with my very creative personality and it lead to some alternative solutions. Like my homemade aiders…

 or the chalk bag I made out of some old clothing I had laying around.

So once I started dedicating myself more frequently to sport climbing, coming up with a alternative low cost solution for the clip stick was pretty natural.

Most people in Brazil will just tape a carabiner around a branch and use a stick to hold it open boogy trap style.

But I wanted something more reliable and easier to use. So I grabbed an old fishing rod and some wood and made the first iteration of my clip stick:

And it worked for years!

In 2016 one of my friends in Brazil bought a 3D printer. I designed the first 3D printed version and I asked him to print Version 2.0:

That sucked….and I knew I had to keep iterating.

Finally last year I moved to Canada with my wife and bought a 3D printer for myself! Now I could make more versions of the clip stick!

During this last re-design process I realized that if I could attach it to my trekking poles I would have a reasonably long pole. It would also remove the need for the extra bulk of a separate clip stick pole.

Most trekking poles can get to about 1.5m and if you combine two trekking poles together, it reaches 3m, which is enough to clip most first bolts. Since I already had a pair of trekking poles hanging around, I made an adapter to attach them together creating a clip stick pole (this adapter is also available to be 3D printed). With the adapter you can use the trekking poles normally to get to the crag and then combine them together to reach and clip the first bolt.

The new design takes advantage of this trekking pole idea, attaching to the handle. With my own printer, I made the current version of my compact clip stick:

Since it is really common to open source your designs in the 3D printing community it just felt natural to just release the design on the internet for anyone who wants to print it.

You can find the design here: https://www.thingiverse.com/thing:3144175

I realise most people don’t have 3D printers so it’s possibly that I’ll put some of these clip sticks online for sale someday. (Let me know in the comments if you’re interested.)

For now, the design is there for anyone who wants to print it.

And I hope this clip stick will help save some unnecessary falls!

-Rodrigo

Clip Stick Instructions

• Find the 3D print download here: https://www.thingiverse.com/thing:3144175
• Once printed, add wire (I used a bike spoke) and bend it so it will hold the carabiner gate open.

• Also attach some velcro strips so it can fit against a trekking pole or a branch.

If you’d like video instructions, let us know in the comments. 

If you want to make more gear, check out:

How to Make Your Own Nut Tool