Sony XB950B1 Headphone Swivel Connector

Last crawled date: 4 years, 3 months ago

This is a replacement Headphone Swivel connector for Sony MDR-XB950B1 headphones that I designed, printed, and am currently enjoying.
Headphone prices are increasing, and when you have 3 sets of the XB950B1 which fail after 9 months, it can be expensive to replace them for your family members. I wanted to print a replacement part and repair the damaged Headsets. I was not able to find this exact piece for my headset, although there is a 3D model on Thingiverse for the XB950BT, but it's different and doesn't work with my headsets. So I chose to draw my headset connector in SolidWorks and print my own spare part.
This was a challenge to draw as there are very few 90-degree surfaces. Just about every feature contains draft angles, arcs, and complex surfaces. As a result I drew this primarily using surface editing with lofts, sweeps, trims and knit commands. Using a pencil and paper, I traced the semi-circle shape of the connector, scanned it to .PDF and then imported that into a sketch in SolidWorks. All other dimensions were acquired via Mitutoyo digital caliper. First print was 99% correct and am using now, but made 3 small adjustments to improve fit with mating parts, and currently printing them out for another pair to test. So this is a Revision 2 design.
I recommend printing it in the orientation shown in the thumbnail on Thingiverse - with the headphone housing side down on the build plate. In this position the head band connector will be unsupported, and require support underneath. I recommend fine resolution to capture some of the fine details, so I printed mine with 0.1mm layer height and 0.4mm nozzle. Using PETG print time on my Prusa i3 MK3 was 2.5 hours.
Enjoy,