So a couple days ago I mentioned that I was getting a splitter 3D Printed by shapeways. It was the first design I made and wanted to see what type of quality I could expect. Well, today I got antsy and decided to design an XLR connector shell that should work with the Switchcraft XLR pin section from the inside. These are the renders. It's meant to have flat surfaces like you can see here. It will be unique. I am hoping the measurements I took are close enough to make this work. If not, a little modification isn't beyond the realm of possibility.
The retainer for the XLR pins is seen in here, behind that ridge.
The design is actually two pieces, the strain relief part can be removed so I can modify the opening for whatever cable diameter I want. Right now it's just a hair under 6mm for the Canare Quad. It's tough to see, but the end is slightly domed, but I wanted something that didn't have this huge ugly strain relief. After all, I'm not going to be connecting this to a microphone and run across stage. To keep this in place I will use a few set screws on the outside. I considered making a seamless design with a screw-in end, but decided against it for this revision. I ordered four plugs in total because I wanted to see what the materials actually looked like in my design. I ordered Black Detail Plastic, Polished Nickel Steel, Polished Bronze Steel, and Matte Black Steel.
This is a cap for the splitter, seen below. I wanted one made out of polished brass, and the other cap had details that were too fine for it. This was the only part of the splitter made out of Brass.
This is the body of the splitter. The hole on the left is actually the bottom of it, a 6mm hole for Canare Quad. The other holes are for the lines to go up to the ear cups and are the right size for 550 paracord. I am not sure I want to use 550, but I figured I could give it a try and see if I like it. This was ordered in Black Plastic and Stainless Steel.
Original design for the splitter cap. I knew this would be a stretch for small details. I want to see what resolution is possible, but this could only be ordered in plastic, so I did black plastic for this.
There's currently no way to retain the splitter cap. I want to try with Sugru and see if that's enough to keep it in place after building. If not a two part epoxy. If that also doesn't work, I will make a stud to screw into in future versions. In the body of the splitter there is a post opposite the 6mm hole. That's so I have some way to provide strain relief. That part is going to be improvised if it's needed.
All drawings were done in sketchup, exported with a plug-in I found somewhere to export STL files. They look perfect once uploaded to Shapeways, so hopefully they turn out with a decent quality. The parts won't be here for some time yet, but I will update once they are.