ball and socket mount with lever actuated locking mechanism

I use this to temporarily attach my smartphone (as a video camera) to a magnifier desk lamp from ELV.

Socket part

the socket part has lego-like bores on the bottom side, arranged in a rectangular 10 x 10 mm grid pattern, the bore diameter in the mesh is 5.6mm, the depth of the pockets is 2 mm, if you create nubs for a counterpart to simplify gluing in place, around 5.0-5.2 mm diam pads with 1.6mm height are recommended for an uncomplicated fit. The socket part has a footprint of 35 x 33 mm.

Ball part

The diameter of the stick is 5mm (in the mesh). For good stability it is highy recommended to print it with the stick lying horizontally, no supports are needed (they are baked into the model). Models without supports can be extracted from the attached FreeCad 0.18 project file.

Lever

To attach the lever, you can use wire from a paper clip for a regular fit, I ended um using a 2 mm diam steel pin for an extremely tight fit (=strong locking effect on the ball). Please note that, once the wire is glued to the socket part with the lever in place, it is impossible to pull the ball out of the socket without destruction, even when the lock is fully disengaged.

Printing

I successfully printed it with a 0.8 mm nozzle, 0.4 mm layer height, 100% infill from PLA. 0.4 mm nozzle i didn't test, i don't see why it (apart from the insane printing time) shouldn't work just as nicely. Please note that you can not print this from PETG, it 's too slippy, PETG will result in disappointing locking strength.

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