Laser cut spirograph

[John Tolman]

Hey all, all I've ever posted on this forum since I joined is questions, so I figure it's about time I post something a little more "constructive."

I saw a post years ago about a guy who was laser cutting spirographs out of used CD's (http://www.lib.aero/~ari/cdrom-recycling/), and thought the concept was awesome. By the time. I never had a Spirograph when I was a kid, but I did have a Spirotot when I was really young, and it was one of my favorite toys for years. Now that I own a laser cutter, I thought I'd give it a go myself. If anyone is interested, I'd be up for posting the designs so they can cut their own. The internal gear is from an original Spirograph, I still need to draw that part up in Solidworks. I also want to see if I can use mounted magnets in the internal gear that mate with a drawing pad of some sort.

What do y'all think?

-John

p.s. sorry in advance if this is mis-categorized, I didn't see a forum more suited for laser projects

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[Bruce Dorworth]

John, I would really like to cut a set of gears. Through the years I had a couple sets of Spirographs. I remember one set had a couple of straight bars, some rings and different size gears. I also downloaded a business card that turned into a mini Spirograph.

Bruce

[Belinda Barfield]

Oh my gosh, John, what an outstanding idea! I loved my Spirograph when I was a kid. I haven't thought of it in years, much less making my own. When I have some spare time I'm going to make up some gears. Thanks for sharing.

[Tom Schulze]

This is great. for those of you that develop any designs for cutting these, I would greatly appreciate them being posted.

[Kees Soeters]

a guy who was laser cutting out of used CD's (http://www.lib.aero/~ari/cdrom-recycling/)
Probably not laser but with a "normal" CNC-router as the material of CD doesn't cut well, i experienced...
Don't know what kind of plastic it is but it just turns brown with a lot of smoke...

Kees

[Steve Kelsey]

I love spirograph! Here is one I have been manufacturing for about a year. It is a big seller at craft shows. You are welcome to use if for personal use or commercial use with attribution. The gears I cut from .125 acrylic and the rest from .125 baltic birch. It is a book style enclosure. The inserts are layered on each side. the full pieces on the left side and the cutout pieces on the right. This keeps the gears from moving around too much. The rest should be pretty self explanatory on how to put together but let me know if you have questions.

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[Khalid Nazim]

Thanks Steve. This is great.

[John Tolman]

Probably not laser but with a "normal" CNC-router as the material of CD doesn't cut well, i experienced...
Don't know what kind of plastic it is but it just turns brown with a lot of smoke...

Kees

You're right, I remembered wrong it says he milled it on a shop bot. I believe CD's are polycarbonate so it would make sense they are not laserable.

[John Tolman]

I'll post up my files as well when I finish them up, hopefully in th

[Tom Sieczkarek]

Thanks Steve!!

[Tom Schulze]

Thanks Steve, much appreciated.

[Andrea Weissenseel]

cool :thumbsup: - I like spiros. Last year or so we had one posted here that was used as a business card

[John Tolman]

Here is my version for those who are interested.

[TAMI WILSON]

can anyone tell me how to open an adobe file in Corel??

I would love to see John's spirograph but can't open it.

thanks
tami

[Scott Challoner]

Tami

You can't open an ai file, you need to import it.

[TAMI WILSON]

Tami

You can't open an ai file, you need to import it.

still not working, says file is corrupt. thanks anyway Scott

tami

[William Desrochers]

Here it is for Coreldraw.......

[Kees Soeters]

Thanks.. Looks good.. Maybe in the near future i will cut them out for my little nephews and cousins.. See if they will spend some time with it instead of their gamecomputer..
( i had no problem importing the first AI file into Coreldraw 5..)
Kees

[Lee DeRaud]

Found an interesting spirograph-related site: http://benice-equation.blogspot.com/2012/01/fractal-spirograph.html
Way more complicated than anything I ever did when I was a kid...not to mention that some of them are impossible with a physical spiro because the gears cross over themselves.

[John Tolman]

Here it is for Coreldraw.......


Thanks William, I was going to upload DXF versions but looks like you solved it already.

The yellow circles were going to be engraved reliefs to glue rare earth magnets into the internal gear piece. Ultimately, I think it would be cool if instead of having to pin it to a board, it simply snapped in place with magnets, but I'm not sure I'll be able to get sufficient magnetic force to hold it in place. We shall see.

[Lee DeRaud]

The yellow circles were going to be engraved reliefs to glue rare earth magnets into the internal gear piece. Ultimately, I think it would be cool if instead of having to pin it to a board, it simply snapped in place with magnets, but I'm not sure I'll be able to get sufficient magnetic force to hold it in place. We shall see.I'm fairly sure the magnets would be string enough.

The issue IMHO is that any given gear (except maybe the straight ones) can be either pinned in place or used as a drawing gear. Unless you have two full sets (with/without magnets), Murphy's Law is going to kick in big-time. Not to mention the pieces wanting to congregate in a big sticky lump...

(I'm speaking from memory of the "official" gear set...haven't had a chance to look at the files yet.)

[John Tolman]

I'm fairly sure the magnets would be string enough.

The issue IMHO is that any given gear (except maybe the straight ones) can be either pinned in place or used as a drawing gear. Unless you have two full sets (with/without magnets), Murphy's Law is going to kick in big-time. Not to mention the pieces wanting to congregate in a big sticky lump...

(I'm speaking from memory of the "official" gear set...haven't had a chance to look at the files yet.)

You're right. I actually bought the original set off ebay to model my version off of. You can pin the interior gears (actually "exterior gears" but you know what I mean) and make larger designs. If I go with the magnets, that would be a lost feature, and it'd only be useful for making the smaller designs. The original set also came with 18 interior gears and 2 rings, then two straight bars, while I've only designed it with 7 interior gears. I'm on the fence whether this is just something I'm making to give out as christmas gifts or whether I want to try and sell kits. For the latter, I like the idea of holding them with magnets and having a drawing pad on the back of a walnut gift box with the corresponding magnets or steel discs. Is it worth imposing such a limitation for the sake of a sleek magnet design? Your guess is as good as mine.

I don't think I had mentioned an important aspect of designing these patterns, and that's the gear shape itself. Rush gears (http://www.rushgears.com/) has an awesome feature on their website where you can build custom spur gears and download the CAD files. I made them with a diametrical pitch of 40 (same as the original Spirograph) and opened them into Solidworks where I added the spiral the pen holes reside upon and then exported to DXF for Illustrator and actual cutting. At first I pulled out the Machinery's Handbook to figure out how to draw out the gears manually in Solidworks. Didn't take me long to abandon that avenue :) I took a machine elements course in college several years ago but I think just the same I'll pass on ever modeling a gear from scratch!

I think I actually found the Rush Gears feature on a Sawmill Creek post, but figured I'd repost that big of info and make it more accessible for anyone needing to laser cut or mill gears. Somewhat related is this guy's blog (http://woodgears.ca/index.html), which I've been following for a few years, and simply put, is amazing.

[Lee DeRaud]

Somewhat related is this guy's blog (http://woodgears.ca/index.html), which I've been following for a few years, and simply put, is amazing.That looked very familiar...turns out I had bought that guy's gear generator program a couple years ago.
Took a bit of digging to find out where it had ended up during my recent hardware upgrades.

[Bruce Dorworth]

The magnets are a great idea,BUT if you have read the news lately there is a big todo over kids and magnets. For some reason they want to swallow them and they play havoc with their insides. Maybe if the magnets were permanetly mounted on the rings it may work..

Just my two cents.

Bruce

[John Tolman]

The magnets are a great idea,BUT if you have read the news lately there is a big todo over kids and magnets. For some reason they want to swallow them and they play havoc with their insides. Maybe if the magnets were permanetly mounted on the rings it may work..

Just my two cents.

Bruce

Oh yeah. Not to turn it into a political discussion by any means, but I do think it is wrong how they did that to Bucky Balls (http://www.getbuckyballs.com/save-our-balls/) (I'm guessing that's what you're referring to). In this case they would definitely be permanently mounted.