Those of you with bikes that have disc brakes know that sooner or later, they are going to start squealing. In my experience, besides being annoying as hell, when they are squealing, they aren't stopping the bike very well, so you really need to stop them from squealing.
One common maintenance step to relieve squealing is to sand the pads. This can be tricky to do without sanding the skin off your finger tips because the pads are small and thin. I decided to make a tool that would make it easier to sand the pads without hurting my fingers.
The tool is 3D printed, of course, and holds two pads for easy sanding without injury. I designed it to fit the Shimano type pads that fit my bike's brakes, but a similar design should work for any type pad. Just set a sheet of sandpaper on a smooth, flat surface, set the pads on the sand paper, position the tool over them, and have at it. The pads fit into 2.5 mm deep recesses and are held captive in the tool as long as you are applying downward pressure on the tool.
It was about a 10 minute design in Fusion360. First I modeled one of the pads, measuring everything to within 0.1 mm using a caliper. Then I created the tool:
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| The tool, printed in PETG, 1 mm line width, 0.5 mm layers, 25% triangular infill. It took about an hour to print at 30mm/sec. |
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| The tool with a couple used, squealy brake pads ready to sand. |
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| The tool and pads after sanding (and a rinse in 91% IPA), ready to go back on the bike and provide a couple more weeks (!) of squeal-free braking. |
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