Customizable Shaft Buddy: A shaft coupler/adapter generator

thingiverse

Overview: This customizer creates a shaft coupler that can accept a shaft (female) or act as one (male) on either end for a variety of shaft shapes, including hex, square, round (with set screws), and round with one or two flats. "Sleeve" mode: Beyond generating the standard two-sided couplers, this tool has a special mode to adapt a smaller shaft of one form to a significantly larger one - it creates a single-form "sleeve" that wraps around the smaller shaft, elevating it up to the size of the larger shaft. To use this feature, set shaft 1 to male and shaft 2 to female, ensuring that shaft 1 is substantially larger than shaft 2. You can turn off this unique behavior by setting disable_single_form to "yes". Background: Previously, I designed a basic set-screw coupler generator for round shafts. Later, I needed to convert a 5/16" round shaft with a 2mm keyway into a 1/2" hex shaft, so I wrote a one-time SCAD script to accomplish that. Following this, another coupler was required, and consequently, another script was created. Eventually, the idea emerged to eliminate all future coupler designs by creating this customizer. Update January 2018: An option has been added to force set screws for non-round shafts (e.g. hex, square, etc.).