Ball Hinge in Tinkercad: Make Anything Hinged

I learned to make ball hinges while I was designing a hand for my Servo Robotic Hand project. In this Instructables project, I will first make a Ball Hinge and explain how we can use it to make anything hinged with a hands-on on a Bat model that we will import or copy from the gallery.

1. Computer
2. Internet
3. Tinkercad account

1. Use solid box from Basic Shape menu and change its dimensions to Length = 15mm, Width= 15mm and Heignt= 10mm.
2. Use hole box(transparent), change its dimensions to Length = 5mm, Width= 15mm and Heignt= 20mm. Place this box into the solid box(Pic 1). Align them so that the sold box forms a "C" shape after grouping both of them.
3. Group both the boxes by selecting both the boxes and group them(Ctrl + G).
4. Now drag a sold sphere to the workplane. From Shape Menu change it to Hole and its Steps to 24(this will give it a smooth surface). The diameter of this sphere will be 9mm(or L=9, W=9, H=9).
5. Align this hole sphere in the sold C shaped box and group them together.
6. Place a sold sphere with a diameter = 7mm and Steps = 24 inside the space formed by the Hole sphere. It should not touch the solid box.
7. Group a solid cube and a cylinder(Sides = 64). Resize and rotate it so that the rounded head aligns with the solid sphere.
8. Select all the shapes and group them together. The Ball Hinge is ready.

For the second part of this project, we need a Bat design first, We can either design it ourself or:

Copy and Tinker:

Go to Tinkercad's gallery and search for a bat. Choose from the search results and then click "Copy and Tinker".

Import:

Search for "Bat free SVG" in google images. Choose from the search results and download the file on your computer. Then create a new 3d design project in Tinkercad. Now click on "Import"(Right of the screen). Click on "Choose a File" in the pop-up window. Upload the SVG file you downloaded, click on Import and you are ready to go.

1. Use Hole box from Basic Shape menu and change its dimensions to Length = 11mm, Width= 15mm and Heignt= 15mm.
2. Use another hole box with dimension Length = 50mm, Width= 1mm and Heignt= 15mm.
3. Align the first box in the middle of the second box and group them together to form a "T" shape. You can now use this hole T shape to place the ball hinges on bat wings.
4. For this, Place this hollow T shape on the bat's wing and group them to form a hole, Place the ball hinge in this hole space and group them all.