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• 

  Created by

  Protonite
• Created on May 2, 2010

It's an universal screw clamp, made out of 4 different parts to be printed out plus a M4 screw and nut.

Idea
Basically i wanted to have some kind of "universal screw clamp" as a reference design, because i love to do all sorts of handywork and crafting. Sometimes when you glue stuff together you just don't have the right tool to hold everything in place while you wait for the glue to bond properly. so, this is my solution to this problem. I'm really looking forward to develop this idea later on and make it even better and more universal. :)

Function
- There is an U-shaped main part that serves as the basic structure.
- In the top of this u-shape is a standard M4 nut that gets glued in so it does not fall out. (a snug fit should hold it in there too)
- Into the M4 nut we screw a long enough M4 bolt, with the head of the screw pointing away from the u-shape.
- Onto the head of the screw we mount a handle, so we don't need any tools to tighten up the clamp.
- On the bottom of the screw there is a ball joint made out of two extruded parts with the ball beeing attached to the M4 screw.
This should help to clamp uneven stuff together and prevent the screw from trying to twist the clamped parts.
This ball joint is really highly experimental. I have no idea how good it will work with extruded parts and if i can even get the ball inside the ball cage. It's made to be able to snap in there, but i have no idea if that works in reality with ABS parts...

Aditional info
This is actually my first design for an extruded part and i don't have my Makerbot yet to test the geometry, tolerances and stability of everything, so take this as a alpha-version or preview that has not been tested yet!

The original design was made on SolidWorks. I still have an old license from the time i was studying microtechnics. It's the CAD tool i am used to and i could not find any open source tool with similar gui yet.

Important for every SolidWorks user: If you have problems with the STL files (Skeinforge crashing) try to import and export them with Blender. Somehow the STL format that SolidWorks saves in is not the same as Blender exports to...

Comments are always welcome, and as soon as i have my CupCake up and running you can expect some updates and hopefully even a printed version that works