Ikea Frakta (Blue) Bag Handle

 I live about a 100m walk from the garage where my car is parked to my door. I don't like to shop frequently, so I tend to load up, and that means getting multiple bags of groceries from my car to my condo. Someday I'll get some sort of collapsible cart to roll the stuff to my door. Until then I use a different means to schlep the groceries from the car to my door.

I keep two, blue, Ikea Frakta shopping bags ($1 at any Ikea store) in my car to carry multiple bags of groceries, or a bunch stuff to take to and from the makerspace, all at once. The only problem is that if the load is heavy, the bag's sewn-on cloth handle crushes my hand. Ouch!

I could have simply cut a slot in a piece of PVC pipe to make a handle, but PVC is hard and slippery, so it might be uncomfortable with a heavy load in the bag. To a hammer, everything looks like a nail, and to a man with a 3D printer, everything looks like a 3D printing project. I immediately thought to use TPU filament so it would feel softer in the hand than PVC pipe, and the ridges from the printing process would make it easy to grip. 

It took about 10 minutes to design the handle and prep it for printing- it looks like a piece of pipe with a slot cut in it! I used generic TPU, a 1 mm nozzle, printing in 0.5 mm layers with 1.2 mm line width at 30 mm/sec with 15% triangular infill, 2 perimeters, and 2 mm top and bottom thickness. It takes about an hour to print and uses 66g of filament.

CAD rendering of the handle. Pretty simple- draw the C shape, extrude, fillet the vertical edges, chamfer the top and bottom perimeters.

This is the handle printed in red TPU. It's rigid, but has just enough give to keep it comfortable. It's 120 mm long and 35 mm in diameter, which might be a little big if you have very small hands.

The handle in place on the bag. It takes a little effort to attach it to the cloth handles, and a little effort to detach it, too, which is good. 

An alternative location to store the handle- use it to hold the bag so it doesn't unfold when you don't want it to.

This handle should work with any other bag with a cloth handle and even dog leashes.

You can download the STEP file here.