Stick Man with magnets

thingiverse

Try to outdo your office mates or family members by building the highest or most unique stick-man tower possible. After that, you can use the stick-men on your metallic whiteboard or your refrigerator. This easy-to-print series of stick-men is designed to be paired with 5x5 cylindrical or 5x5x5 cubic magnets. All should be printed with some TPE (e.g., Ninja Flex), but the 9mm ones also can be printed with a hard plastic like PLA. The 5mm ones are meant to be flexible, while the 9mm ones are stackable, and the 7mm one falls in between. The OpenSCAD files should include the same code and allow for customization in any way you like, e.g., see the parent project for an example and also take into account new parameters we added. You can order magnets from AliExpress.com by searching for "5x5mm neodymium magnet" or 5x5x5 ones. A pack of 100 costs less than 10 Euros/$ and took two weeks to arrive in Switzerland. The reason I created this project is that I wanted to experiment with both TPE and magnets and learn about their physical limitations. Two lessons I learned: (1) Bigger than 5mm Ninja flex sticks with 15% infill do not bend very easily, and (2) small strong magnets are not as powerful as expected. Print Settings: Printer: Felix Pro1 Rafts: No Supports: No Resolution: 0.3mm Infill: 15% Notes: I tried to create flexible stick-men that can be stuck together with magnets. Only the 5mm versions allow bending, while the 9mm ones are stackable but do not bend much. Have a look at the magnet parameters: If using TPE, make the hole smaller, e.g., for a 5mm magnet use 4.4 In addition, you can add a bottleneck on top of the hole (magnetextra* parameters) and either keep the same length of the hole or make it longer (the magnet will be "inside"). Ninjaflex doesn't bond well, so I highly recommend making the hole as small as possible. Use a stacked stick of magnets to force them in. You can also add glue, e.g., I tried Pritt extra strong (wait a few hours before use). However, reducing the hole size and adding a bottleneck is more efficient than using glue. You can also stick a magnet into the head and heart. This allows for more creative constructions. TPEs like Ninja Flex should be printed slowly, e.g., 15mm/sec for the first layer and 25mm/sec for all the rest. Using a nozzle bigger than 0.35 would also be a good idea (the sticks in the picture are made with a 0.35 one). Post-Printing: Finishing: I simply burn off excess strings, but there may be more gentle ways. To insert the magnets, take a stack of 8 or more magnets (you get more force like that and it will be more likely that you get the right direction). Then, make sure to test the right direction before forcing the magnet into its hole. How I Designed This: Changes to the code: I took the code from Daizyu and came up with 2-3 interesting configurations that required some changes in the code. For example, the 5mm version requires larger hands and feet to be able to stick magnets inside, the head hole is now a parameter, and there is an extra hole for the heart.