3D Printed Fidget Spinner

So I wanted to give my kids an opportunity to design and make their own things.

My eldest son had seen fidget spinners online and wanted to give it a go.

In this instructable, he goes through the process of designing his spinner on paper, refining the design in Fusion360 and printing it out on our home made 3d Printer

Step 1: Initial Design

To get an idea of what the final spinner might look like we decided to draw out a few designs. This will get the creative juices going even if the final spinner looks very different to what was drawn.

It's important to view this as a process, and to keep moving forward even if you feel a little disheartened that you cant get "THAT" design on the first go.

Step 2: Create a 3D Version of the Design

Start by adding some construction lines a the centre of the design and fix them so they cannot move

Next draw 2 circles, one to represent the overall size of the spinner and the other is the size of your bearing. Make sure you measure the distance between your pinching fingers and the inside of your hand as if the spinner is too big, you won't be able to spin. Also make sure the bearing have been measured accurately, Too big and they will fall out, too small and they wont fit.

Next create the basic shape of your design. I our case we drew out 1/4 of the design. To save time and effort, we then used a circular pattern to copy the elements of the drawing around the centre of the spinner. We then trimmed the elements of the outer circle that we didn't need to reveal the design.

Step 3: Preview and Refine

Using the extrude tool, we were now able to see what the design would look like if we printed it. We weren't too happy with is so made improvements.

Going back into the drawing, we added some detail with the line tool which made it look much better.

We extruded the main body of the spinner and then extruded the star shape so it was 2mm above the main area.

we then added some fillets and chamfers to soften the design. Finally to give it a personal touch, we added some initials to the points of the star.

We then asved the design and sent it to our slicing software.

Step 4: 3D Print & Finish

After slicing we printed the spinner in PLA on our homemade 3D printer. We then pressed the 608 bearings into the body and it was done.

Conclusion

While we were happy with the overall design in the end, the size of the spinner was slightly to big making it akward to use. More care needed to be taken when measuring the dimensions of the hand but we are very happy with the result for a version 1.