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Gears Gears Gears.

The search “gears” returns 407 things on Thingiverse, and “gear” shoots back 641. Clearly there is something that gets us excited about parts that translate torque from one thing to the next. The best example of our shared obsession is, of course, Heart Gears.

MAKE Magazine’s Sean Michael Ragan has gifted the world with a fantastic “family tree” (on his personal site) of the heart gears sensation on Thingiverse. Here’s a still image of the chart, but you should visit the link to get a clickable version. The post also includes the source code for generating the tree.

This is awesome awesome awesome. Our recent project at the Met, which will now be spreading into towns and cities, highlights how important it is to talk about the origins of physical things. Things and ideas have roots and families and beginnings. It’s so important to keep this in mind when uploading things in a community like Thingiverse. As a reminder, if you forget how to assign “ancestry” to your Thing, this blog post explains it.