Clutch or One Way Bearing - Print in Place

thingiverse

This is a fun little one-way bearing I designed with my son to be printed in place. As you can see in the cutaway, rollers have flared middles and ends that hold them more or less parallel to the axis of rotation. All the flares are at 45 degrees, so you shouldn't need to worry about supports. In the other cutaway, you can see how when the bearing rotates one way, the bearings spin freely but in the opposite direction, the rollers are pinched between the inner and outer races, causing them to bind or mechanically couple. The bearing is 50mm in diameter and 20mm thick but could easily be resized. I've included the SolidWorks file for anyone who wants to experiment with it further. The gaps between the parts can be tuned to make the bearing tighter if desired. I set the gaps at 0.4mm, but smaller gaps are possible without causing the parts to fuse. Overall, the bearing spins and slides pretty well - not the best free-spinning bearing I've made, but with the clutch feature, it's a pretty good compromise.