CRUX Bouldering Ball

This is a fun, customizable bouldering ball I designed, that is extremely easy to print and change out the routes as you need. The frame is designed to be printed flat as one piece, and then fold and snap into the final form.

The individual hold pieces are easy to mount and change, they only require you to insert and twist to set them in place. Built on a pentagonal design, the pieces can be rotated in 72° increments, so you can make minute, but very noticeable, changes to the ball. Great for passing it around at a group and upping-the-anty every round.

I would recommend using PETG for the frame, or if you desire to use PLA, I would advise heating the frame up on your build plate to soften the folding joints before assembly. Also, ensure you give a good elephant foot compensation in the settings.

Right now, the ball comes in two forms, a plain free-for-all route, and a ball with a printed in place route. The printed in place route requires a multicolor swap, and if you do not have an AMS like me, I highly recommend following this guide to add some gcode to the Filament End code to facilitate and easy swap: https://www.reddit.com/r/BambuLab/comments/1ffyc3t/print_multicolour_without_ams_from_bambu_studio/

At the time of this upload, I have designed 5x sets of holds, being;

1. Penta Hold: simple, base hold, easy to grab. Comes in different sizes(large, small, & skewed), and 2x heights (10mm & 5mm).
2. Pocket Hold: an internal pocket hold, comes in 4x depths (5mm, 10mm, 15mm, & 20mm). The pockets have two notches on the edges, this is to be used to ‘spanner’ them out with another hold, just use the edge of another hold to assist twisting them in and out.
3. Moon Holds: simple concave moon hold, with 2x different thickness for a smaller or larger surface area, and in 2x heights (5mm & 10mm).
4. Crimp Holds: classic crimp holds, comes in 3x different sizes for a small, medium, or large crimp surface area.
5. Knob Holds: a sorta-radial star based holds, adds to the fun when you are ale to orientate them differently. Can be used as hard sloped, as flat crimps, or multidirectional with the 4x way hold. These holds also come in 5mm and 10mm heights for each of the 3x styles.

I will include a video/gif shortly of how to assemble the ball, but it is fairly simple. It assembles very similarly to this video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?time_continue=61&v=B30xQxAoya8&embeds_referring_euri=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.printables.com%2F (I did not copy this ball design, I only saw it after I had designed my methodology for the assembly, but thanks go out to https://www.printables.com/@GeekMomProjects for the helpful video. Essentially, assemble the 2x halves independently, then fold the two halves onto each other, and snap the connectors together. It is somewhat necessary to flex the ball during assembly to aid in the construction.

For the colors, feel free to use whatever you want, I just when with colors similar to my local bouldering place for simplicity.