A spirograph can hide another one!

      3D printing is growing very fast and user gets access to new possibilities. These printing machines have different caracteritics such the size of printing area, precision, printing speed or the cost of course! This technology is a big success, many users gave their own creations or rebuilt something already existing. The main hub is Thingiverse, famous thanks to the huge quantity of free download stuff! 

By the way, for the post of today, I will test for you two spirographs! They are availables on links hereafter (with another one!):

Spirograph by 3Domas

This is a fun toy for drawing geometric figures https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j8jZ3I_e5eM

http://www.thingiverse.com

Basic Kit Spirograph by RenatoT

Hi All, here my kit derived from this: http://www.thingiverse.com/thing:252162 I just added the hole to prevent deformation of main gear.

http://www.thingiverse.com

3d Printable Spirograph toy by ForgetfulJones

Love the toy, don't have a lasercutter. So here you go, might do an update with a container soon... :) Great thing safay :)

http://www.thingiverse.com

      As you can see on picture above, I tested two spirographs, the orange one (Spirograph by 3Domas) and the red one (Basic Kit by RenatoT). Both are composed by a wheel and three gearwheels. To do a pattern, we start to insert the pen inside one of the hole on the smaller wheel. Then it cans turn inside the bigger one until the drawer feels dizzy! :)

      The pattern will change following different parameters, the position of the holes on small wheel and the diameter of this one. Both tested version have triangular, square and elliptic patterns. Red spirograph has some inconvenients, this precision may be better, the diameter of the holes is too big in my opinion AND it's very easy to fail! Small wheel can miss one or two teeth, and then, you can just restart! Orange version, has a step to avoid this kind of mistake, moreover the teeth on wheel and gearwheel are bigger. So the drawing will be complete with less turn!

      In my opinion, interest of spirograph is to have a nice pattern quickly. With the red one, diameter of the hole is a bit too big and we meet some difficulties to find again the first stroke of the pattern! As the wheel is not transparent due to printing material, it is quite complex to finish correctly the pattern! Orange one doesn't have this matter, we can turn, turn and turn, we find (almost) always the first stroke. Finally, both version have no-stain side thanks to dedicated step decreasing the friction between the wheel and the paper sheet. Smart!

Whether you want or your printing machine have the function, you can print these parts with a quite small layer definition in order to have clean and very functionnal teeth!

      I hope this post will help you and will give you the motivation to test these useful tools! Don't hesitate to leave me a comment and like the post on social networks! Max