tricky coupling mechanism

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verfu

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Hello everyone,

I’m trying to build a coupling system between two cylinders to connect them coaxially and transfer pulling force from a string on the surface of cylinder one to a string inside cylinder two. Please have a look at the sketches attached. Both of the cylinders have an outer diameter of 44mm and the upper one is hollow with an inner diameter of 22mm. On top of the lower cylinder sits a clutch which consists of a turnable ring and some elements which slide in and out radially. By turning the ring 60 degrees either clockwise or counter clockwise an adapter which sits on the upper cylinder gets stuck in the clutch. So there is one open position of the ring/clutch at 0° and two closed positions at -60° and 60°. Until here everything works fine.

Now to my problem. From outside the lower cylinder two strings enter the clutch below the ring. One of them is a loop and passes through the clutch. I want to be able to transfer either a pulling force of approximately 80N from string B to some structure inside the hollow upper cylinder (skipping the structure idea and connecting the strings from lower and upper cylinder directly would be even better but I didn’t find a solution for that) or a similar force from this structure to string A. Which of the strings is connected to this structure depends on in which closed position the ring is. So turning the ring to the left (-60°) should connect the structure to string A and turning it to the right (+60°) should connect the structure with string B. The mechanism should work no matter in which angular orientation I stick the adapter into the clutch. In the end I will 3d-print the whole thing and use dyneema ropes with a diameter of approximately 1mm as strings.

I’ve tried several solutions but none of them worked good enough. I would be really grateful if anyone would come up with an idea how to solve this problem.

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I can't figure out what's going on here from the pictures and description given. You mention a clutch but do not have one shown or labeled in your drawing. It's unclear where the strings are attached or what this accomplishes (other than transferring force from one string to the other). If transfer of forces from one string to another is the goal, I can think of about 9 million other ways to do this. Way 1: tie them together. Way 2: tie them each to opposite ends of the same thing.

 
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