Click! A print-at-home construction kit :)

prusaprinters

<p>Having spent uncountable hours as a kid building cars, roller-coasters, spiders, catapults, boats, gliders, bridges ... you name it ... from bits of plastic that click together, I thought it might be fun to try and design a print-at-home construction kit.</p> <p>It was!</p> <p>The Joint:<br/> This was the main challenge, make something that would hold well, click in and out with a sensible amount of force, chunky &amp; tough, print without supports AND (this is a big and, hence the caps) not require the super tight tolerances that commercially available plastic assembly kits (lego / k'nex ) require.</p> <p>The solution was a 10mm, sort-of-ball-and-socket joint, the ball maintains tension in the connection while the vertical sections provide torsional strength to the joint, layer lines are perpendicular to the connection for maximum strength!</p> <p>With right angles, corner pieces, 3 4 and 6 way hubs as well as Y pieces, your imagination is the limit ...</p> <p>... and I have more ideas for functionality:</p> <p>Print-in-place articulated joints.<br/> Square shaft slide-motion with U pieces.<br/> Snap-together 3D joints (think all +- all 3 cartesian axes)<br/> In-part, print-in-place bearings.</p> <h3>Print instructions</h3><p>Print flat, featureless side down, no supports necessary.</p> <p>I used:</p> <p>PETG (it's slippy &amp; it bends)<br/> 0.15mm layer height<br/> 2 perimeters<br/> 15% infill<br/> 5 top &amp; bottom layers</p> <p>Test fit a connection on your printer by printing a straight and a Tee Corner and click and unclick them a few times - the first time is always the toughest.</p> <p>If the joint is too tight, just scale the width of the straight down by 2%.</p> <p>If the joint is too loose, just scale the width of the straight up by 2%.</p>