Anyway the design and files are here for free, feel free to print them yourself if interested makerworld.com/models/1851142
24.02.2026 05:16
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Anyway the design and files are here for free, feel free to print them yourself if interested makerworld.com/models/1851142
I also tried making a little board to put them on, inspired by some wooden toy thingy, and it’s fine, but I don’t find it is needed. Afaik there’s another different lattice u could do more spiky
I also made a standalone dodecahedron piece, this decreases magnets needed relative to 4 smaller pieces
I later just found a supplier of thicker magnets (stacking two magnets=1 thicker magnet) and this improved strength a bit more. Here’s some various colors I tried, 3D printing is fun :3
So I decreased the size as much as possible, and stacked each magnet two high (so there were eight magnets per face). This paid off, the connections were very strong now!! Longest supported bridge test (green is new design)
So I picked up some stronger magnets, and… it worked okay. Def better, but I felt it could be improved
So I tried eight alternating magnets, but that didn’t help much because the size counteracted any of the gains from more strength
It worked, but, the magnets were too weak and it was a little frustrating to use
So I excitedly made lots of pieces and inserts (had to play with the depth until it fit in snug), and…
*size
Okay, so next thing to try was smaller magnets. I picked up these little disk magnets
I tried decreasing the side but the inserts then overlapped causing this problem
So that resulted in this chungus pieces, but they were too large and so the mass of the PLA+lever (the larger the more dist between connections) meant they weren’t very good to use
That was a lot of magnets so I made these little annotated test pieces to see if I could get away with 2 or 3 magnets instead of four. But it seemed like the strength lost was too much and it wasn’t worth it, and I needed to do four
So I thought, let’s do four magnets instead, in this pattern.
Alternating so
+-
-+
Then I could insert them into the piece. This worked, and even let me attach two pieces together only at 0 and 180 degrees! Unfortunately it was gendered, M-F worked but M-M or F-F would be 90 degrees and 270 degrees instead.
It was easy to embed it at the top and bottom, it was the sides that were especially annoying. So I thought I could just print these little PLA boxes around the magnets…
But I wanted to try a magnet thingy, so I started with this design. Basically, I would insert these bar magnets at various points while printing, then it printed over them and sealed them into the piece
This was very tedious and if they weren’t snug enough they’d just come off and attach to printer
So it starts with these little guys, it’s a snap fit connector. This works alright, the bumpy side is the face with supports. A later design had one face open to make it less bumpy on the bottom
Here’s the abridged history of prototypes
Wanted to do a longer devlog on my process finding this design. How does one design a connector that allows you to rotate 180 degrees and it still connects? (But not at 90 or 270 degrees)
User verus in rust
I got u fam
Due to popular demand, here is a demonstration video of how to make 3D printed PCBs using just vector drawing software, a 3D printed (PETG filament for mine) and self-adhesive copper tape. Any questions, let me know!
I think it’s both true that
1) wikis are bound to happen
2) we got unusually lucky that the predominant one didn’t enshittify and actually had decent management
Most wikis are full of ad videos and etc and that seems the default
Use Verus
You should try verus
