I said I wasn’t going to do it, but PinShape’s toy contest convinced me to take the joints I made for my Cymon robot and make a more generic modular robot toy. Introducing CyBot!
The goal was to make these bots more home 3D printer friendly than modibots, more stylish than like beco blocks. There is no ball flatening like on modio to make them printable. Instead all balls are designed to print at the top of a shaft so they’ll print perfectly round. There was no attempt to punch them full of holes like the Modibots to save on materials either, so they’re a little more expensive on services like sculpio, but they’re sturdy, perfect for FDM printers.
And of course they don’t have to be assembled into a humanoid robot.
I’d love to continue developing these and make horses and cows that can be combined with the basic set to make centaurs and minataurs, dinosaurs and accessories. But the basic set (and a rescaled Cymon bot coming soon) are up on PinShape for their contest right now. If you’re on pinshape I’d love a like and repin. If you’re not I’d love you to get on pinshape to give it a like and repin.
Now for the “behind the scenes” bit that you read this blog for. The bot you see in the pictures was printed with a filament diameter that was too low. Consequently his joints were too tight which made posing a problem. Every pose you see him in was a frustrating fight with joints popping out and at the end one of the balls delaminated about 1/4 the way up. As soon as these pictures were done this busted bot went into the recycling. But if I keep doing this project I’m going to need to reprint this one, so I’ll have to fix this.
