Stickman: print-in-place AND lockable

thingiverse

[edit] to put this in perspective, this is my Gen-1 ball joint design [edit 2023-10-21] this design has proven not 100% reliable: with time, the pressure on the ball is transferred to tle PLA outer shell, and the shell delaminate at the bottom of the ball. I have made a totally new mechanism design that overcomes this. I’ll post it soon in a robotic hand object. #### Conception #### I have tried to design a universal ball joint that is - print in place - lockable This stickman has 23 ball joints all print-in-place. It is more a demonstration of the joint ball concept and how to use it than anything. But it is anyway a fun toy project. It is made by manually scaling and assemling the same basic joint: see the 3mf file just push the joints into contact in windows3d (free) and they will be fused by CURA when slicing. The joints are "double joints", if you want a single joint you can "dissociate" a double joint, suppress the parts you dont need and group the remaing parts. additionnal parts: For the knees, that must bend in the other direction, I have made a second joint design. You can "skin" the stickman by plugging a custom head, hands and feet. Just make a hole of the right size where you want to plug. I have designed a "hole" thing for this. To demonstrate this, I have added here 1 head, 1 hand and 1 foot. Mirror the hand and foot to get a pair. The result looks a bit funky, but with the big feet, you can really put the stickman in any pose. The head is a remix of https://cults3d.com/:783360 the hand and foot are a remix of https://www.thingiverse.com/thing:2480974 I have a separate post on thingiverse with the joints only. You can find them here: [future post on thingiverse] #### Slicing and printing #### sliced with standard CURA 0.2 PLA, except: - combing : all, - z hop : yes, - print thin walls: yes - infill: 100% These settings are to avoid stringing and bumping into unfinished parts. You better have a well calibrated flow or everything will be fused. On my printer I must set the flow at 90% to get perfect results. You can see my calibration procedure in this thing: https://www.thingiverse.com/thing:5861178 Printing is 5h on my Artillery Genius. Best with cheap Wanaho PLA. I tried EOLAS PLA but the result is shiny and the joint is squeeking. Not good. I tried POLYMAKER POLYMAX but all my prints failed due to warping. Not sure why. #### Locking #### use a small screwdriver to tighten the joint by sceewing it. Dont screw too hard, just what is needed to prevent the joint to move too much (you still want it to move). If it become loose, you can still screw it tighter later. You can screw less than 1 turn. If you screw 1 full turn then you come back at the start position (and the inside is probably destroyed too). Sometimes the top part of the screw will break out and fall out of the joint. It is not a problem, you can still screw, the important part is inside. see the locking process here: https://youtu.be/L2ffOoL1yCM?si=31iBielRHxHAyHCe Head, hand, feet assembly: put them in the "correct" orientation, and strongly push the joint into. Try no to break the joint when doing that. There will be a 'clac' sound and this is done. It will be difficult to dis-assemble the joint, so make sure you snap in the good orientation. Since the section is a 9mm square, there is 1 good orientation and 3 bad ones. I should have included a foolproof device but i have'nt. Enjoy, and if you want to help me: press the like button, make a comment, or post a make. you can another style of posable figure here: https://www.thingiverse.com/thing:5861178