SnapFit (snaplock) Connector Library

SnapFit (snaplock) Connector Library

Description

After a few only moderately successful attempts to add snap-lock features to some of my things, I spent about an hour looking for a snap connector library. I couldn't find one, so put this one together remixing various ideas from other things. My collection of snapfit parts (which all contributed to the development of this library) is: https://www.thingiverse.com/dgm3333/collections/snapfit Hopefully it will make it easier to create snap fit parts for your designs and decrease the need for gluing or arduous supports when printing designs. If you design in Blender or some other 3D modelling program then OpenSCAD can export to a variety of formats (eg stl etc) but it would be very easy to convert the current script to Blender python if you were using it regularly - If there were enough comments that this would be helpful I'd do it, but it's not a popular library so not worth my time at this point (leave a comment if you do convert so others can access it and I'd be happy to add such a conversion to the files for this thing). I haven't created a zillion stls, as there are tons of parameters you are likely to want to adjust, so just have a play in openSCAD. The examples are all at the bottom of the file just switch the viewing variables at the top to true or false to turn them off. Also some of the items are relatively processor intensive so have their own seperate switch. Just look for:- viewExamples = true; viewSlowExamples = false; If you want a particular item in your new design you can just include the libary file with the following statement in your openSCAD file:- include <SnapConnectorLibrary.scad>; You will need to edit the libary before linking to it from your new design so it doesn't show all the examples:- viewExamples = false; Then you just use the module with whatever parameter you want. eg polytooth("sine",1.5,6,0.5,5,8); or polytooth(); You can see what each of the parameters do under the acutal module definition, and the default settings (if you call the module without any parameters) eg: module polytooth(tooth="sine",length=1,width=1,height=1,ratio=1,repeats=1, ridgeRatio = 0.75) If you want to create the opposing grip point then just use a scad difference operation to cut the snaplock part out of the other piece - you'll have to scale it slightly, but unfortunately because tolerances of every printer is different there may be some trial and error if you want a particularly close fit. Rounded connectors are slightly more forgiving but you can always adjust the fit after printing with knife... At the bottom of the libary file is a section //Examples. Under this you can see how each module has been placed in the demo setup and copy these for your own use. There's quite a bit more that could be done with this library, so I'll probably edit as I need new parts for things NB with an FDM printer the "spring" should be printed horizontally in the x or y axis to maximise strength

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