Fidget Three with Planetary Gear Center

thingiverse

Designed to eliminate the challenge of printing intricate ball bearings, this uses a planetary gear center instead. Although the original fidget spinner was suggested to print at half scale, the teeth of this might be difficult to print accurately at that size. If you print any smaller, then you may not have enough clearance between the teeth of the gear. I've successfully tested this on Repetier-Host and achieved excellent resolution printing it at 1:1 scale. I'm also using mm as my unit base instead of inches, which shouldn't affect anything. I've attempted to match the design of the original Fidget Three as closely as possible. Like the original print, it comes out a bit large. I printed mine at 0.75 scale, but it should also come out okay at 0.5 scale. Printer Settings: Wilson TS Rafts: No Supports: No Resolution: 0.3 Infill: 20% Post-Printing: The gears can come loose initially. You may need to apply some force to break them free. I managed to succeed by twisting and torquing them until they snapped apart. Another person, skv, was able to loosen them up by soaking them in hot water. How I Designed This: I opened the Fidget Three in Blender. I changed the unit base to mm by scaling it up by 25.4, and measured the thickness, outside diameter, and inner hole diameter of the ball bearing. Using Thingiverse's Thing Designer, I created a planetary gear set that matched the measured dimensions. I had to adjust the number of gear teeth to ensure everything was sized correctly for printing. I downloaded this into Blender, removed the original ball bearing, and replaced it with the planetary gear. The original bearing was beveled, while the new gears were not. I added a bevel that matched the previous one, which should enable the new part to rotate like the old one. To confirm its behavior, I loaded it up in Repetier Host and made sure it sliced correctly. Everything appears fine, but I'm running low on filament and haven't printed one out yet myself.