What have you made and shared today?

Bathtoy by Request!

After explaining Thing-A-Day to my daughter, I asked her what she would like me to design for her for day 2. Answer: A sailboat for the bathtub.

Tool for a Working Artist!

Last night, my wife needed a circle template for an art project she was doing. This took about 15 minutes to make in total, from design to finished product. And that is why 3D printing is awesome.

Jewelry (and Tool for Future Jewelry)!

This design is intended to be an envelope to be boolean used (intersection) with other textured designs, we’ll see….

Tool for Learning About Clocks!

I figured this tool might be useful for the MakerBot Clock Makers project and for educators and students looking to explore basic gear mechanics.  (I am spending time each day designing new attachments for it.)

Keep checking back to see what other Thing-A-Day participants are sharing on Thingiverse — and get out there and make some stuff.

Whirligig by ThePlanetMike

I love seeing flying toys and ‘copter parts on Thingiverse because they really showcase the finest points of 3D printing – fine details, strong, durable, thin, and lightweight.  This Whirligig by ThePlanetMike is an excellent accessible and understandable application of how versatile 3D printing can be.  And it’s an awesome flying toy.

Whirligig by ThePlanetMike

Introducing the Thingiverse's first fully printable flying object, the Whirligig. Just like its wooden toy ancestor, the whirligig will fly like a helicopter several meters when spun by hand. Here's a video of the Whirligig in action: youtu.be/Ly2nxN80kGs

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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 [↩]

Qball by Benoit

Benoit’s Qball is a cute little printed-plastic-and-rubber-band creation that snaps back into semi-spherical shape after being deformed. ¹  This little gem makes use of only two different printed parts² plus a number of rubber bands, so it could probably be built into an arbitrarily large springy structure.  I like this one because strikes me as a great conversation starter or desk fidget toy.

Qball by Benoit

A few years ago I was interested in Penultimate Modular Origami by James S. Plank cs.utk.edu/~plank/plank/origami/penultimate/intro.html folding paper into geometrical spheres. Now there's a rapman in my stable and paper turned into polylactic acid. This is my first printed object, I hope you"ll enjoy it! Can be pressed, stretched, thrown, twisted, and the bow-connectors could be basic elements for connecting rubbers into anything! In TwistinTheCube.skp I tried to reveal how you get a Qball by twisting a cube, before it becomes a cuboctahedron.

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1. There’s also a lasercuttable version by nikor! [↩]
2. One that goes over and one that has a bend in it to go under [↩]

I don’t know about you, but no small part of why I bought a 3D printer was so that I could make toys.  There are no end of very practical applications for 3D printing, but making toys is probably my favorite.  With Thingiverse abound with mashups and derivatives, each new Thing uploaded has the potential to be hacked into something else entirely.  If I’m not mistaken, Renosis’ collapsible flower is the first collapsible toy uploaded to Thingiverse.  How long before we have a collapsible cat, dog, or dragon?

Flower - Push Puppet by Renosis

This is a Collapsible Flower or push puppet. You push the button on the bottom and the flower goes limp. Designed in OpenSCAD, Source Files included. *** UPDATE *** I have made a change to the Button... which is located in Flower-Red.stl and also on the Flower-Tray.stl. I have also uploaded a new version of the OpenScad file with the changes. Basically, it makes the button shorter, which allows for more movement in the pot, which will make the flower go even limper! It makes it look much nicer. New video posted below! Here is a Video of the flower in action:youtube.com/watch?v=PjEeOx-yp4o Updated Video Showing the old and new versions of the flower:youtu.be/K2dZtu1U94U

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Finally, some enterprising Thingiverse users (Renosis and our own MakerBlock) have recreated a classic toy: wind-up chatterbox teeth.

Note the two-toned effect achieved by switching filament at the right moment.  And look at those teeth — a bit more realistic a bit more so than the classic version of the toy.  Even better, this includes a printable drive mechanism — you only need to supply some nuts & bolts and a spring.  Lazier designers (like me) might have just stolen a mechanism from another toy, but no: they’ve supplied modeled the whole assembly (and provided source files!)

So print it, build it, leave it on your bedstand — just don’t get it mixed up with your dentures!

ChatterBox Teeth - Wind-up by Renosis

This is a Collaboration between MakerBlock and I for the MakerBot United Competition. And we now have a new collaborator syvwlch! If you like it, please click the 'like' button! These are a set of Windup ChatterBox Teeth, like the kind you get in gag stores or the kind "The Joker" always seems to have in "Batman". The two toned teeth are of course achieved by changing the filament at the proper time during the print. The wind-up portion is driven by a clock spring, which you can get from any old wind-up toy (or a wind-up clock, but why would you want to destroy a clock?). I got this particular clock spring from a Dollar Store Easter Toy, you can see the pictures of the Harley Riding Easter Bunny I sacrificed in the instructions. The Drive Mechanism is a Geneva Drive, which is pretty common for a wind-up toy. You wind up the spring and it rotates a cam shaft, opening and closing the teeth. Unfortunately, we could never get the mechanism to work properly. The teeth chatter of course, but the problem here is they chatter too fast and the clock spring expends its energy WAY too fast. We still have a few days left in the competition, so if anyone thinks they have a solution for this and would like to collaborate, speak up now! We have tried every thing we can think of and are at our wits end. We thought gears would produce enough friction to slow the clock spring down, but they don't!

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ChatterBox Teeth Gears by MakerBlock

Two gears for use in the ChatterBox Teeth, a collaborative project with Renosis.

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Extending Tube by MakeALot

Before I understood the glory and power of OpenSCAD, I fumbled around with Sketchup for designs.  A while ago I had wanted to print concentric cylinders in PLA for the purpose of making a light-up collapsible sword.  It worked terribly and I uploaded it to Thingiverse anyhow. 

MakeALot, on the other hand, has wrought an amazing parametric OpenSCAD script for a set of collapsible concentric cylinders that can lock in place.  MakeALot’s designs and description are another example of an excellent contribution to Thingiverse.  He’s uploaded his design files (the OpenSCAD script), a couple of different STL’s (so you don’t even have to use OpenSCAD if you don’t want to), a detailed set of instructions and descriptions, and has contributed some really insightful responses to the comments offered by others – all with a very permissive license.

I also found MakeALot’s notes on his experience with printing tolerances and  experiments with gaps for moving parts very interesting.  And, last, but not least this project serves as a great way to find out the limits of your machine when it comes to printing moving parts in place.  Seriously, how cool would it be to be able to just create fully functional mechanical objects straight out of a 3D printer? ¹  I’m really looking forward to playing with this script to make a toy collapsible sword as well as finding out the tolerances of my 3D printer.

Extending Tube by MakeALot

An extending tube printed as a single print. Extend, twist and push to lock in place.

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1. And, you know, it could even include a rubber band placer so that you could print a, say for instance, toy clockwork spider, that would just get printed and then walk off the platform.  That way you wouldn’t even need an automated build platform! [↩]

RoboSpider

I’ve been thinking for a while now about how I could make a walking toy insect that would be powered by just one little motor.  No fancy electronics, just one motor, turning in one direction at a constant speed – making a little robot walk.  I’d really rather it ran off of a rubber band or a spring, but baby¹ steps.

I really like the existing walking robot projects out there.  The DogBot and the ModHex are very cool, but they seem to require a pile of servos each.  Up until very recently, I didn’t have a good idea of how I could make something that could walk without the use of a very complicated Theo Jansen style walker.  While tinkering with idea based on arkatipe’s bugbot, I started searching for videos of insects walking and eventually found a video of a real spider walking and an animated spider walking.

I’ve included a little sketch of how I generally conceive of the idea as working.  Two smaller gears on the left and right of a larger gear, which makes the two outer gears turn in the same direction and speed.  There’s a bar that attaches to each of the outside gears and will rotate in a very wide elliptical fashion.  A set of four of these could possibly be run off of a single worm gear.  Half of the assemblies would be set to be on the downward rotation as the other half are rotating upwards. ²

Let me know what you think of this project.  I’ve uploaded my design files along with some other notes to Thingiverse.  Would you be interested in hearing about my OpenSCAD designs?  Do you want to know what additional OpenSCAD design tricks I used that are not in my series of OpenSCAD tutorials?  Do you want to about the print results from the first draft?  Do you have some suggestions?

1. spider [↩]
2. Although, you could probably  have this work with only two moving assemblies and two stationary ones rotating around. [↩]

What would you ask Santa's elves to make for you?

Or…  A gnome of your own?

Just over a year ago the idea of a DIY 3D printed toy with moving parts seemed a little far off. ¹  Then Kparanya uploaded their Toy Car with Captive Wheels.  Since then we’ve seen all kinds of multi-part toys uploaded to Thingiverse including lots of puzzles, a transformer, and Beco building blocks.

Although I use my Cupcake CNC to print a lot of tools and things to assist with repairs, what I really love using it for is printing toys – especially those I’ve designed.  At the moment I’m really enamored with the idea of designing an open source disc shooter.  But, this is just something which interests me. ²

If you had a MakerBot at your disposal, what kind of toy would you want to design?  I suppose another way to ask this question is, “If you had one of Santa’s elves³ at your disposal to create any toy imaginable, what would you ask for?”

If there’s enough interest, perhaps I could do a series on the process of brainstorming, designing, creating a proof of concept, prototyping, and creating a polished design for a toy.  (Although, I suspect this process is reasonably similar for any kind of inventing)  Leave a comment and let me know what you’d like to see!

1. Photo courtesy of jpellgen [↩]
2. Although, it seems like at least one or two others would want to print them out if the designs were available. [↩]
3. Or, perhaps a fussy gnome? [↩]

Derivative Design Concept: Open Source Disc Gun

This idea occurred to me this morning.  It’s basically a derivative of about 5 different designs (mostly rubber band related) on Thingiverse.  I’ve scanned in the entire sheet, so you should be able to print it off at full A4 paper size.  As a kid I loved these cheap plastic disc guns – but the internal plastic parts broke so easily that they were quickly trash.  I’d like to make an open source version that can be easily repaired, upgraded, extended, improved. 

If people like the idea, I’d be willing to do a series on the design, development, and prototyping of such a concept from start to finish.

What do you think?