Joinerers v1.0 by Nath

Last crawled date: 2 years, 12 months ago

Used to join 25.4 mm / 1 inch square extruded aluminium together in various ways to make frames (generally sold in standard lengths in hardware stores or metal suppliers - e.g. known as Qubelok or Connect-IT in Australia). These connectors are designed to be printed flat without supports to improve printing times and avoid clean-up for rafts - so they aren't perfectly "cubic" as a result (to avoid overhang).
The use of aluminium extrusion square tubing allows for larger frames to be created - test out various degrees of in-fill or shells to see if it is strong enough (as with any 3D printed part that needs to take load).
Unlike the limited options for commercial joining pieces - by creating a 3D printed version (aka "Joinerers") there are a wide range of additional pieces and you can do funny angles if you need, hence the name "Joinerers" - for all those weird joinering needs!
All the standard things like 90 degree connectors (elbow, Tee, Cross, corner and intersection type connectors) as well as 45 degree, 30/60 degree, end caps (with and without the lip that some variations of the extrusion have) - if special angles are required get into sketchup and edit things to suit and then export to .stl (let me know of any additions or improvement and I can add to the next release!). Would suggest running through a "fix model" just to be sure as sketchup sometimes gets a bit imprecise with shapes.
To lock it all down once you have your frames built - some self tapping metal screws can do the trick - or update the shape to have longer/tighter fitting connectors. Feedback welcome! Also means you can have your choice of colours for your frame connectors.
Also intended to expand to allow joining of different shapes to this standard 25.4mm square tubing - e.g. 20mm square or round piping etc. Would like to build up an open source general set of connectors - would be a good way to allow for making use of whatever extrusions, piping or straight material there is around to make whatever is needed.