Threaded Stainless Balls and Rods

If you are making a custom stop motion ball and socket puppet armatures, these will help. Threaded balls and rods come in a variety of sizes and can be soldered together, or loctite adhesive can be used.

Find out more at the Stop Motion Store by visiting: http://www.stopmotionstore.com/index.php?main_page=index&cPath=26_29

Category:

Film & Animation

Tags:

• stainless
• threaded
• balls
• rods
• socket
• stop motion animation
• custom
• puppet
• armature

[stopmojim]

Marc, I have a pro-plus armature which also uses threaded stainless balls and threaded rods (I don't think the rods are stainless though). They also advise using the threadloc, but I think soldering/brazing would be stronger. I have never tried either with stainless and am a bit afraid of ruining my parts. Is there anyway you, or a friend, could show how to solder or even better braze a ball to a rod for us? Does it require special solder for stainless? Great vid with cool ideas as usual btw.

[animateclay]

@stopmojim Hey Jim, I know Lionel from stopmoworks has a tutorial on soldering balls to rods. He's really an expert on that. Only his tutorial doesn't cover stainless, or threaded balls. Brazing would probably be the best way to go. Essentially you would thread the rod into the ball and using a propane torch, heat the ball up, and then work the heat right into where it connects to the rod. You want it to get white hot at the connection. You'd have to use helping hands or a table vice to hold it.

[animateclay]

@stopmojim the next thing you'd do is touch your filler - such as rosin core solder "no flux needed" and touch it to the connection area. You'd have to play with the temperatures. For small balls you wouldn't need as much heat. For larger ones you'd have to head them up longer before touching the solder to it.

How Lio does it is to put solder inside the hole of the ball first, then presses the ball down with a hammer onto the rod. But that wouldn't work with threaded balls obviously.

[1BigLebowski]

Of Course! Piercing gear! That's genius Marc. Look at all of those different sizes, too. Next paycheck I'm loading up on these. Thanks you for posting this. Also, I guess if the rod isn't threaded far enough, you could possibly continue the thread with a tap and die set and some cutting oil if you really needed to. But I think if you just solder this together it should work great. And since they're stainless they won't darken foam latex like brass or copper, right? So awesome!

[animateclay]

@1BigLebowski I don't know how far the hole goes in these balls. You might be able to do that. If anything they can be drilled deeper if they are too shallow as well.

[stopmojim]

@animateclay Thanks Marc! I'm gonna give it a try. Been itching to put this armature to good use.

[jordanwade94]

nice vid