The Fidget Factory

If you are reading this you've probably seen the excellent range of fidgets from taylormadearmy.  After printing several I got to thinking about other designs that might be fun, and I came up with this Fidget Factory.  The idea is that you print a bunch of tiles and hinges, and then you join them together in whatever arrangement you want.  It's also easy to pop the hinges out again to reconfigure them to a different fidgets.

This approach has some interesting advantages over the print-in-place approach:

• Sometimes print-in-place hinges can be too loose, leading to a less satisfying experience
• Sometimes hinges might be fused off the build plate meaning the whole fidget has to be discarded
• If a print-in-place fidget breaks you have to throw the whole lot away, rather than just replacing the failed part
• Fidget Factory fidgets are not limited to geometries that will lay flat on a build plate
• Once you get bored with a Fidget Factory fidget, simply pop out the hinges and reconfigure it
• Fidget Factory means you can have a much greater selection of colours, without massive wastage, with hinges a different colour from the tiles, for example

There is obviously one big disadvantage, depending on your point of view, in that you have to assemble the parts yourself.  If you are put off by that, then go check out taylormadearmy, as mentioned above.

To get you started I've included a Starter Pack of tiles and a Starter Pack of hinges, and instructions below on how to make your first fidget with them.  There is also a plate of tools; the hinge bender is not really necessary as they bend easily enough with your fingers, but the other two tools are handy.

There are also plates with a bunch of tiles and hinges on, which should be useful when you move on to designing your own.

There is a plate with one of each part (five different tiles, and two hinges), from which you can mix-and-match as required.  “Hinge-T” on that plate is the loose hinge and “Hinge-M” is the tighter one.  While I've included all five possible tile configurations, the ones that take two hinges are by far the most useful.

Colouring the parts

To colour the tiles such that the inset triangle is a contrasting colour, make you first colour change at layer 9 (1.80mm) and switch back to the initial colour at layer 13 (2.60mm)

Assembly Instructions

Take a hinge and bend it to about 90 degrees.  Take two tiles and place them on a hard smooth surface, with the hinge between them like so:

Then simply push down on the hinge and it clicks in to place.  While you can do this with your thumb, it tends to nip your skin a bit, so use something like the provided insertion tool:

It is important to ensure that the two tiles are touching and are flat on a hard smooth surface.  Please don't do it on your best hardwood table as it might leave little dents!

It's also possible to insert the hinges by holding the two tiles side by side and pushing down like so:

You can use the tweezers to remove a hinge:

So, on to building your first fidget.  Connect the 20 tiles as shown below:

Next pull the two remaining hinge points together so it looks something like this and insert the final hinge:

Now you should easily be able to fold it like this:

A much greater challenge, though, is to fold it like so:

And that's it!  This is a pretty small fidget, so you can't make so many shapes with it; why not print a second starter pack and join the two together somehow?

If you are short of ideas for your own designs, take inspiration from other fidgets out there.

Enjoy, and don't forget to come back and rate it, or even boost it if you are so inclined!