3D Printed Ball Shifter Pneumatic Coupler
 

I know teams have been posting pictures of Shiftier Couplers that they have 3d printed. Is an ABS print holding up to the pressure of the system? The snap rings in our shiftier shaft keep failing. I would like to step up to a bigger bearing with a full snap ring, but I can't do that unless the 3d printers work for this application. What are teams finding out in the testing of these parts?

Has anyone had issues with the snap rings besides us? What have you done to remedy the situation?

Thanks in advance.

Re: 3D Printed Ball Shifter Pneumatic Coupler
 

We've been using a 3D printed coupler to use 2 pancake cylinders to shift our winch. So far, so good - I'd call it in the neighborhood of 150 shots? no signs of wear that I've seen.

Ours were printed on a Dimension BST printer in ABS - other printers and materials may not be as robust. The CAD was by user tag_groff of 4265.

Re: 3D Printed Ball Shifter Pneumatic Coupler
 

At first we 3D printed a new one out of abs to fit the 1 1\16 bore cylinder we wanted to use but after about a day of use it blew out and we have since been using an aluminum one that threads on the the cylinder and is slotted to allow the bearing to slide in.

Re: 3D Printed Ball Shifter Pneumatic Coupler
 

We were having problems with a 3d printed coupler so we designed a bearing block style coupler for 1-1/16 bore cylinder and have not had a problem yet. The bearing is now half inch OD and we use the same snap rings without a problem.