3D Design

Fidgets

Carli McGinty, 7th Grade

Drakes Creek Middle School

3D Design

I created two fidgets. One is a fidget tornado that is shaped like a star (8 points), and the other fidget is known as a worry stone, and there are different variations of it. The worry stone I made is a heart with grooves in it to rub on. I made these fidgets because I realized that I didn’t have any fidgets. I love fidgets and making 3D designs, so I created the 2 fidgets that I did.

First, I went into Tinkercad & created a heart shape along with a star shape. I added multiple lines (that were holes) onto the heart. I moved them down some into the heart, but not all the way through so when I grouped the lines and the heart together, the grooves weren’t cut all the way through the heart and stuck out a bit on top.

Then, I copied the star shape and made it into a hole then grouped the hole & the star together. I copied the star outline & made it smaller to fit into the hole. I repeated this process until I had enough stars. Turns out this didn’t work, so I looked for a YouTube tutorial. Before I looked for a tutorial, I printed out the heart and sanded the bottom down so it would be smooth.

Next, I found a YouTube tutorial on how to create a fidget tornado shaped like a star (linked below) and followed it. It told me to add 8-pointed stars and make them 100 mm (millimeters) big & copy it a few times. It then told me to add some smaller ones that were holes then copy them a few times. After this, each pair of stars was grouped together, and then the grouped stars were all grouped together. The video then said to add a rectangle hole and cut off most of the star (the top) and duplicate it. The duplicated star was made upside down and placed on top of the original star, then the design was finished!

Finally, I printed out the star fidget & sanded the bottom of it down. After the bottom of the star was sanded down, I began plucking out these unnecessary lines of filament because the fidget wouldn’t work if the lines were there. After the lines were plucked out, the fidget wasn’t working how I intended, but it still worked. I went home that weekend, and totally forgot about it. I remembered on that Saturday the star even existed, and I found out that the fidget was working way better than before.

I created this product using Tinkercad. Tinkercad is a free website where you can create your own 3D designs (with & without codeblocks) and circuits. I used Tinkercad because I have had experience with it in the past, and also Tinkercad is the only 3D design website that I know of.

What inspired me to create this was that I felt like I needed a fidget, especially since I didn’t have one during my cancer treatments.

One problem that I encountered was when I was adding the lines on the heart fidget, the lines weren’t wanting to cooperate. They just kept snapping (moving to a nearby spot) onto the grid which was annoying me. Another problem that I encountered was that the original star (the prototype) wasn’t going to work at all. It was a prototype, afterall.

What I liked most about this project was when I got to test out the fidgets & when I first saw the finished product. It just felt so… satisfying.

Credits:

YouTube link: Make a Fidget Star in Tinkercad in 5 Easy Steps