I'd use Text::ParseWords. Maybe it's to good for the purpose, but at will never be too bad for it.

use Text::ParseWords 'shellwords';

open my $infh , '<' , 'print_tools.txt' or die "... $!";

while( <$infh> ){
   my $printer = ( shellwords($_) )[0];
   print qq{modelCombo.addItem("$printer")\n};
}

close $infh;
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