The last couple of months have been a bit hectic here. A lot has been going on with moving to the new warehouse and getting the new website up and running, so for this month's print of the month I wanted to do something that was a bit fun and whimsical, so what better than a fidget toy!
This one is a bit different to most fidget toys you find, it's a musical fidget
by Kida on Makerworld that plays a tune when you move the slider. I thought it was pretty cool, so I had to give one a print for myself.
The settings for this one are pretty simple, just a 0.16mm layer height with 15% infill printed in PLA on the Bambu Labs P1S. They don't require any support material as they print in 3 parts, 2 halves of the body that snap together and the slider prints separately and slots in between the 2 parts of the body. You can print them in a single colour, but if you do, remember that you will need to draw on the start point like we did on the pink one so you know what side to start moving the slider from. For the Mario one, there was no need for this though as if you use an AMS, you can set it to apply the details and the start arrow in a different colour. This does increase the print time a bit, but not that much as there are only a few colour changes on the first few layers and they should still only take less than 2 hours to print and only use about 20g of filament.
According to Kida, some filaments do sound better than others, and softer materials don't tend to sound as good, so I figured I would give the Copymaster3D standard PLA a go, mostly because it was the only PLA that I had to hand that had a good choice of colours for the Mario one, but also because based on the creators description of what worked well, it seemed the best bet to give the most reliable result. I did hedge my bets a bit with the pink one though in case the Copymaster filament did not work very well, as this was a random old spool that I found in the cupboard that hadn't been used in a while that I just mostly used to see if it sounded any different. Once they were printed though, I think they both sounded really good!
Getting the hang of the tune can take a bit of trial and error, but they are fun to play around with and seem to bring a smile to the faces of everyone that gives it a go. They will be a great print to have out on the stand for shows this year, and will be a nice thing to have out in the new showroom when that's finished, as fidget toys and things for people to pick up and have a play with always go down well with people looking at examples of the things that are possible with 3D printers.
Check out the Mario one in the video below, and the pink one (for which I purposefully haven't mentioned the name of the tune) see if you can guess which song it is!
If you can't figure out the name of the song for the pink one, don't give up! Just play it again!
Don't let me down! I'm sure you will figure it out eventually!
Don't forget to leave a comment if you figure it out, but don't tell people what it is, let them figure it out for themselves.
