TPU Hinge/Swivel Ball Joint 2.0 with PLA Sockets

JUST SO YOU KNOW, you're gonna need the Cura Mesh tools plugin to separate and delete the blocks if you don't want those in there. This is necessary for Printing the joints in TPU and the sockets in PLA while maintaining the scale necessary for the connection to fit correctly.

I've changed up the connection between the joint halves so that they can better lock into one another and not separate after too much torque pressure. The same goes for the sockets that they plug into as well, (socket examples now included with the file!) It should be a much more clean "plug and play" action, while still having a decent amount of friction to hold its pose.

I've re-scaled the sockets to be a bit wider to account for shrinkage. Obviously you can do a much better job at printing them to look more clean, but I'm impatient and kinda just wanted results more than a pretty print job. Take that as a sign that i designed this to work well despite any print inaccuracies caused by physics or user error, ease of use was the main idea here. Buuuuut if you want to still see my settings..

95a TPU at 100% infill is essential for the joints to function, as far as i know this variable should not change.

I used esun TPU Gray, 200 on nozzle, 60 on bed, 80mm travel speed (like i said i was in a rush, if you want pretty with TPU print slow) and unfortunately you're still going to need supports for the overhangs, (touching buildplate) it printed at about 42-45 minutes.

For the PLA parts, i used esun pla+ gray, 215 on nozzle, 50 on bed, i believe at about 80mm travel speed, with 15% infill, you can have lower infills for the sockets and they should still work fine.

The total scale of the file with the sockets is 2.5 inches or 63.5mm on Y, and the Joint file with the boolean parts is about 45mm or about 1.8mm. (UPDATE: i've printed this at half the size with the joints themselves measuring at only 1 inch or 25.4mm! they still function great when resized to be tiny!).

And of course i added the boolean parts you can use to make socket cuts for any of your projects.

Hope this helps with all your future projects! Happy Printing! :-)

UPDATE 2/19/2024------ ADDED SEPARATE OBJ FILES FOR JOINTS AND BOOLEAN SOCKET PARTS, (SCALES TO 1.5 INCHES WHEN PRINTED AND CONNECTED).