MakerBot Industries

Mechanical Animals by sconine

Thingiverse citizen sconine has just shared some really amazing toy mechanical animals.  Colorful, playful, and whimsical, each of these hand crank toys is sure to delight a child. ^1 2  Guaranteed not to wet the carpet, bite, or require you to let them out in the middle of the night these creatures would make excellent pets for any kid.  Interestingly, since the coolest instances of these toys is with multiple colored components in each toy, this is one of the few multi-piece prints that would not be well suited for printing plates!  I especially like how each of these toys has a distinctive motion to them.  I can’t wait to see what other little mechanical toys Sconie shares!

Also, over the last two weeks or so I’ve gotten into the habit of handing out imaginary and arbitrary points.  10,000 awesome MakerBot dad points to Sconine!

Mechanical Animals by sconine

These are 3 different machanical animals. They are all pretty basic mechanical devices that turn rotary motion into more of a linear motion. My kids (and their friends) have gotten a real kick out of them. I drew them all in sketchup.Jumping Prairie Dog Turn the crank and make the prairie dog jump up and down.Diving Dolphin Turn the crank and watch the dolphin dive through the waves.Wood Pecker Turn the crank and see the wood pecker peck away. (This was originally posted as a pecking bird, but my kids all call it the woodpecker, so I'm putting it up as part of this collection).

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1. Or, as in my case… the child-like. [↩]
2. They are also very reminiscent of the popular Trammel of Archimedes [↩]