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Universal Joint with bearings
Universal joint using four minibearings.
3D printer parts and enhancements
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Description
This is a universal joint which uses four 1/8 x 3/8-inch R2ZZ type minibearings mounted in the central ball. This turns more smoothly than a simple plastic pivot would. I printed in PLA on the Ultimaker 2. You can see it in motion below (sorry my output shaft was smaller than 6mm, so it was not centered in the joint)
Materials and methods
- 1x central ball (print)
- 2x clevis fork (print)
- 4x minibearing 1/8 x 3/8 x 5/32 inch
- 6x M3 screw
- 4x M3 nut
- Print one ball and two clevis parts. The ball takes 4x "R2ZZ" or "SSR-2ZZ" mini-bearings (1/8 x 3/8 x 5/32 inch) pressed into four faces, and 4x M3 screws + 4x M3 (8mm long) hex nuts which fit in the two arm pieces and go into the ID of the bearings. Not an exact fit with metric screws, but fairly close.
- Each clevis has a hole for 2x M3 setscrews for the input and output shaft, holes slightly undersized so the screw will bite into the plastic. The shaft hole is sized for a 6 mm rod, but you can adjust that in the SCAD file of course.
- If you do edit the SCAD, don't forget to download the M3_screw file also or you'll miss the pockets for the M3 nuts in the clevis faces.
Documents
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