While hanging out with a few friends over adult beverages last night, we got to talking about this antique universal joint that has been in my friends dad's shop forever. We're pretty sure it came off an old tractor PTO. our big question is just how the hell was it made? The center ball has dovetail type slots cut into it and the 2 ends are dovetailed into the slots. There's no way to take it apart that we can see and due to the dovetail you couldn't press it in. Maybe we're just a bunch of drunk simpletons, but we are honestly baffled by this thing.

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It wouldn't work. I should have taken more pics. The bottom side is wider than the top. I'm almost convinced it is actually an alien artifact. I wish I could even figure out what it was called, because it's not actually a universal joint but I don't have a better way of describing it. If I knew what it was actually called I'd Google it

That makes sense, certainly the most plausible explanation I can think of at the moment

Does anyone know what this type of joint is called? I have learned about 20 new types of mechanical flex joints I never knew about but I have yet to find anything that resembled this!