We had the great fortune of being situated right next to DeviantArt at Comic-Con for the past several days, so an extra wave of great artists found their way over to our booth. It turns out there is a great collection of 3D art in that community.

And check this out, at least one person is actively using a MakerBot for some original toy design.

The artist, ~bohnded, writes that this is his own re-imagined series of figures, based on G.I. Joe Sigma 6 bodies, using Marvel’s Micronauts as inspiration. These figures are 8″ tall, more than twice the size of the 3.75″ figures of the earlier toy series.

~Bohnded has used the web-based design system Tinkercad to design the add-ons like armor elements, and then made them on his MakerBot Thing-O-Matic. Nice work!

Sometimes the things you make with a MakerBot are so lifelike that they confuse nature.

Continuing with the theme of wings for the day, a project from the MakerBot Applications Team:

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.

Untitled by ThePlanetMike

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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!

Untitled by sconine

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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.

Untitled by Benoit

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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?

Untitled by Renosis

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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!

Untitled by Renosis

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Untitled by MakerBlock

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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.

Untitled by MakeALot

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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. [↩]