Threaded Tubes

thingiverse

The designer shares his unfinished project that didn't make to the Makerbot giveaway contest. He developed a way to pretension tubes based on Forest Higgs' blog entry about square tubes taking sideways load. The idea involves internally threading the tubes and using setscrews with a hole through the center to tension a cable or wire, holding tube sections together. Two types of setscrews are provided: one is regular and the other is captured. Both have a 15mm hex head for tightening with a deep throat socket. The designer created a script for making screws but it takes long rendering time. He also used an stl file to create threading in tubes, reducing render times significantly. The main purpose of sharing this project was to contribute to the Reprap's effort of printing more parts. He used version 2010.05.10 and included Catarina Mota's shapes.scad script.