Cat Tail Gear Wand Mechanical Fidget Toy

Sometimes beautiful things come from ugly emotions :P. Let me explain. 

A dear friend and fellow designer showed me something similar to this that another designer shared on Twitter. The artist claimed to have invented this, and I had never seen anything like it before, so I wondered! I looked into it, and it turns out artists like Florian Goerlitz and David Braun is who really broke ground with this type of thing and really helped me for reference material, since the other guy decided to paywall his “invention.”

So I made my own version - dubbed “Cat Tail Gears” so you can print it too!

ASSEMBLY INSTRUCTIONS

1. All parts are numbered 1-11 and then a single gear that is the 12th part. The Gear with two nubs goes on the handle, followed by Gears 1-11. Then the smallest single gear goes on last. 

    

2. Insert a screw into the first gear. The screws all work with a small coin, so find some change. 

    

3. When assembling, it is important to get all the orientations right or it can make it too tight to move reliably. To solve for this, each number is oriented facing the handle, so you will always be able to read the number when assembling. If the number is upside down, the part needs to be flipped around. It can help to lay them all out in a line and do it that way. 

    

4. Enjoy! This works best when printed with traditional PLA+, as silk and matte has poor adhesion.