Cat Toy / Pop-beads

thingiverse

Taking a break from the Cambrian Explosion, I decided to see if I could design a print-in-place ball-and-socket joint. Turns out I could, and it works splendidly. Then I realized there were two uses for a string of them together. If you are, to quote Gilbert & Sullivan, "sufficiently decayed," you may remember the pop-beads we used to get from gumball-type machines that dispensed a few small toys for a penny. I always thought pop-beads were the cop-out toy, but here I am, sixty-odd years later, making pop-beads and thinking they're fun. However, the primary use, for this file in particular, is the Highest Purpose any 3D printed Thing can aspire to achieve: being a Cat Toy. This cat toy is Mocha Approved! It shakes, rattles and rolls! Stuff the loops with feathers or catnip leaves for extra grooviness! NOTA BENE: Do not allow your cats to play with this unsupervised. I highly recommend printing in ABS to make this more chew proof, but always supervise; these take a lot of force to pull apart (more than I can apply sitting in a chair and being old), but you don't want any of it swallowed because the vet bills that would generate are mind-blowing. ABSOLUTELY DO NOT GIVE TO DOGS!! You can snap the two elements in the file together by softening the last bead on the right-side string under a heat gun for no more than 30 seconds, then inserting the bulb on the beginning of the second string, and letting the whole thing cool down.