This week’s selection is the Spirograph by MyMiniFactory user Valois Torms.
Yes, this item is highly reminiscent of the children’s toy, but you can make it yourself. It’s composed of a set of sprockets that when paired together and rotated, form a path for a pen to mark interesting spiral shapes. By changing the sprocket combinations and using different pen mount points, you can generate hundreds of unique “spirographs”.
I like this design for two reasons: First, it’s an incredibly easy print. It takes very little time to print, in fact, if your build plate is sufficiently wide, you can produce all these parts in as little as 90 minutes in a single print job.
The secret is that they are mostly flat and thus require very little material.
The second likable aspect of this design is that it’s functional. Print these sprockets and give them to a child with a pen and paper, and they’ll be busy for quite a while.
One thing we would like to see in this type of model is a parameterized version, in which you could develop your own sprockets with unique capabilities. However, that likely takes some math to do properly.
Meanwhile, the Spirograph is available for download at MyMiniFactory, along with tons of other terrific 3D models.
Via MyMiniFactory
