Mar. 3, 2015 | By Alec
While 3D printers are great for manufacturing toys that are sometimes much more fun than what we had to play with as children, today’s kids tend to disagree. As most 3D printed toys are just solid objects, I’ve found that kids can get bored with them pretty quickly. While you could of course construct one of the many 3D printable robots that populate the web nowadays, there are easier options out there as well. Just check out the modular Spring Things that 3D artist David Hagemann just revealed.
As you can see, these are multi-part squid-like figures with many movable and flexible parts. While the basic set can be used to produce a couple of toy figures, just combine three or four of these sets and you (or your kids) can have endless building fun for just a couple of bucks worth of plastic. It's a perfect toy for kids to use their imagination and play with their hands, rather than with their pc screens.
As German designer David explained on Reddit, he was really just playing around with simple 3D figures. "Originally I just wanted to create something quick with these simplified springs which can easily be 3D printed. Now I made a whole array of little pieces that can be combined to build stuff," he writes.
And they are remarkably easy to make, in both PLA and in ABS (which David used). "No support structures are required. I have printed my things in ABS, 0.2 layer height and with rafts,’ he adds. It also, he assures us, easily connects and disconnects without breaking or falling apart while playing with it. If you’d like to try it, visit David’s Thingiverse page here to download the STL files.
A Spring Things Spider.
Posted in 3D Printing applications
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