Printable Wago-style Terminal Block (30V 9A) by Harvie

Last crawled date: 3 years ago

This wire connector can connect up to 3 wires together in similar way to wago blocks.
3d printed mechanism with toggle lever allows to create pressure which pushes wires against small piece of slightly thicker "bus wire".
WARNING: This will burn your house down unless you fully understand implications of the design and used materials. Provided 30V/9A rating denotes absolute maximum rather than reccomended operation conditions. Do not use for high power stuff. This design is meant as proof-of-concept and might require improvements to fit it for particular use case. No warranty is provided.
There are two pieces, which can be 3d printed as whole assembly without supports. Can be printed under 10 minutes on any reasonable FDM printer. (I've used Průša Mini with 0.4mm nozzle)
These are reccomended sizes of wiring:
0.5mm diameter (AWG24) = may be scavenged from ethernet cable.
0.6mm diameter (AWG22) is also possible
1.0mm diameter (AWG18) have been tested, but is bit harder to handle
I was even able to fit Dupont male connector inside! (see the photo)
1.3mm diameter (AWG16) for use as bus bar permanently installed in the connector. has to be solid core (obviously).
It is strongly advised against mixing several wire thicknesses in single connector as thick wires might prevent the thin ones to be properly cinched. I guess model can be improved in future to allow individual wires to be cinched by separate springs.
Please note that closing the connector with higher wire diameter will cause it to loose some of the springiness. Especialy after using 1mm wire the connector lever does not hold in closed position without any wire inserted. But it still keeps the ability to hold small (0.5mm wires very well).
Currently all wires can go all the way through the connector. This is mostly for experimental purposes. The holes should be blind if intended for serious use.
This also allows the bus wire to go through several blocks to connect them together.
If you use slightly longer bus wire, you can bend it and use it to solder whole thing to PCB!!! Model contains second hole for bus wire, which is not connected anywhere, but can be used to provide better mount to the PCB. Consider your mind blown!
If you need to scale this model to accomodate bigger wires, i think it makes sense to scale it with respect to bus wire. Because that is only tightly fitted dimension. Other wires dimensions are self-aligning.
I have printed this from PLA and "springiness" of whole thing is tuned to work best when printed from PLA. But PLA is far from being safe material for use in high power electricity connectors.
Ever heard about "Deans T" connector? These are popular connectors rated for 60A. While they use metal spring, they still completely rely on plastic to provide enough pressure to hold the spring and everything together. They are made from fire-retardant PolyAmide (=Nylon). This material is also available in form of 3d printer filament. So that might be interesting material for further experiments.