JV - 5 Gallon Bucket Separator Clip

I have quite a few 5 gallon buckets, and trying to separate them when I need one is often a hassle.  This little clip doesn't take much filament, but it punches well above its weight class, allowing me to throw a few of these on my buckets, stack them up, and know that I'll be able to easily separate them when the need arises.

I have no idea how many are actually needed, I tend to use 3 per bucket, roughly spaced in thirds like the Mercedes Benz logo, and there's never a problem.  

I tried a few others, but either they were too small, and broke easily due to the width(15mm width seems to be the sweet spot of durability and limiting material usage, for me).  Others were SUPER tight, which I tended to break due to the force required for removal.  I also had an issue with a few oddball buckets I had that didn't seem to want to stack as nicely due to the thickness of the inner section.  Due to all of this, and wanting to test a design idea I had, I whipped up my own version.

The Fusion360 file is included, as well as the STEP file.  I have no idea if there's an easier way to make these, this was more of a test for me to figure out how to make something, rather than dealing with trying to modify an STL. I started with a basic shape in Tinkercad so that I'd have something with known dimensions that currently worked, and built off of that.  Knowing what I learned, now I'd be able to make this entire item in Fusion360, even if it's not the most elegant creation.

The inner part of the separator clip is tapered on the side that faces the inner wall of the bucket.  This is to act as a spring, of sorts, and also make it easier to remove by pressing upwards on the tapered end, while pulling the curved "handle" out.  

I don't suggest PLA for these, unless you're just needing to whip some of these up in a hurry and don't have anything else (or don't want to swap out the spool).  These won't hold up outdoors, if you have a need to add or remove these often - they'll just snap on you eventually.  I'd suggest a minimum of PETG, it seems to have just enough flexibility for this, and I spaced the multi-packs wide enough that you shouldn't have any stringing when printing - I've printed at least 50 of these with zero issues once I fixed the spacing of my initial effort. 

I also DEFINITELY recommend a brim with these.  There's not much to keep these things upright, and as you can see the BIQU Frostbite plate in my pic, even that didn't hold up to a batch that I wasn't paying attention to, and printed without a brim.  I've got a bunch of 10mm wide clips that at least I was able to learn from - both printing needs, and durability of the clips.  The 10mm worked well, but didn't stand up to repeated removal.  

Hope you find these as useful as I do