XTRider

I may be cursed. My last bike was a Guerrilla Gravity Smash. I replaced that bike with a revel rascal, which I have to this day. Both companies are now gone... what should i buy next?

@KolaPanda: I have one of these tools, and they are too stiff to be unfilled nylon. Maybe it has some other sort of fill, but glass fill is by far the most common for this sort of application. Most " composite" bike pedals are glass filled nylon, including crankbros. As you pointed out, they likely chose the material they already have suppliers for, and knowledge in working with. Regarding strength, cleats do have a tendency to twist while you torque down the bolts ( especially CB cleats with a plastic shim), thus why one of the product details is " Prevents cleats from twisting during installation ". It can take a reasonable amount of force to keep the cleat from twisting while to torque them down, and the tool needs to withstand that force at least. Even if strength wasn't a concern at all, the design is optimized very poorly for 3D printing. It doesn't have any large flat surface for the built plate to stick to. As designed, it would take an unnecessarily large amount of support material, which would then leave the surface finish on the plate side looking like shit once support is removed. The design was obviously optimized for a two part injection mold tool, not 3D printing. I am 100% positive this tool could be designed for 3D printing, but that is not the current design. Why would I want to pay money for an STL file of a part that was obviously not intended to be 3D printed? Give me a few hours, and a sample cleat, and I could have 3D print optimized version of this tool hot off the printer, if I really cared to have a 3D printed version of the tool. Guess I am probably biased though, as most of the satisfaction in 3D printing for me comes from designing the models myself.

Honestly not a bad idea to share the STL. However, the tool was designed to be made in glass filled nylon, which is significant stronger than your typical 3D printed PLA. If the intention was for the part to be printed from PLA, it would need to be significantly reinforced to get close to matching the performance. Most people don't have a 3D printer, so not sure why Crankbros would invest their time into creating a 3D print specific version of the tool, to then give away for free. If they did charge, you know people would just pirate it. Make sense for them to sell the tool, as intended in nylon. I am sure someone will eventually reverse engineer the design and post the STL online, but that only really helps people who already have access to a 3D printer. For those without, it would still make more sense to buy the better quality original.

In what way is this tool Proprietary? It works with both Crankbros cleats, as well as SPD cleats and Hope Cleats. Sure you could use pliers to hold the cleat, but it isn't as convenient. This is like claiming rotor straitening tools are useless. I could just bite the rotor with my teeth to bend it back into place after all. It's a cheap tool that serves a specific purpose. Seems like complaining for the sake of complaining at this point.

I have been running a couple variants of these tools for a while, and haven't had any issues with rattle on either the bottle cage or twin tube variants. There is a spring inside the tube keeping the tool preloaded, this in my experience, does a pretty good job keeping the tool quiet. Makes it a bit more difficult to put the tool away, as you need to compress the springs as you thread the cap on, but worth the sacrifice in my opinion.

Not sure how this would be possible. In the end you are taking a bike and adding to it.