Kiddicraft Twist And Turn 1970's mechanical playset toy

thingiverse

This project is THE reason I bought a 3D printer. My parents managed to save a wonderful plastic toy from my childhood that I want my daughter to enjoy, and it appears the original item cannot be purchased anymore. The plastic has become brittle and cracked. Kiddicraft produced this toy (they're also credited as the inventors of Lego) in England. I couldn't find much information about the original product; if you had one, please share your experience. If anyone knows the story behind the original design, let's put it on record. After two months of learning and experimenting with OpenSCAD, the result is a fairly accurate reproduction of the toy with two versions of some parts. One version replicates the moulded plastic used in the originals, while the other is an FDM 3D printer-friendly version that's just as good, if not better than the original for strength and safety. I also modified the nut parts to have threads all the way through; the originals only had a small thread in the middle due to manufacturing limitations. Be careful when printing the threaded rod part – take a look at the Print Settings section for some slicer ideas. I've added a shorter rod (which still fits all three nuts) for those having trouble with the full-size one, and I've activated the customizer using the relevant OpenSCAD file so you can create a custom rod of any length. I'd like to thank the creators of the Poor man's openscad screw library and Nut Job code, which got me started on this project.