November 15, 2018
Description
It is often necessary to connect multiple 3D-printed parts together, either to allow one of the parts to rotate, or due to limitations in the printing process such as build size, preventing overhangs, or printing in multiple materials. These pins allow you to do that fairly easily when designing the parts, often not ever needing to glue anything (although you can use glue as well, if you want to ensure it will never come apart...)
I have included three different sizes of pin, and the ability to create almost any sized custom pins as well. The standard pins are about 25mm long, with a socket diameter of 7mm, while the small are about half that size, and the tine are as small as I can make them reliably.
Optionally, you can give the pins (and sockets) rounded ends, which shortens them slightly for the same strength, but I think the points increase the alignment stability.
This is modified from Emmett's rather excellent pin connectors: https://www.thingiverse.com/thing:213310. I had been intending to design something very similar to this, and then found it had been done already :-)
The main change to this is the addition of further parameterisation, which allows a much wider range of size to be specified, as a number of people have been looking for a way to make the pins much smaller.
STL files for the pin and socket, both fixed and free, are included for three sizes. The one named pin-round-standard should be compatible with Emmet's, and should fit in the same sockets, although it's own socket is shorter. The small is my original small pin size, and the tiny is about as small as I have tried to make it so far, although smaller is probably possible...
(Note as of 2018-11-18: I made some very minor changes in how the preload works today)
I have again heavily refactored this from my previous version( https://www.thingiverse.com/thing:3210316 ), to add support for both rounded and pointed pins, and to allow it to work with the customiser. Rounded pins allow them to be shorter for a given size and strength, but pointed one are probably more stable in the holes.
License:
Creative Commons - Attribution