A remix of Fra085's Bug Spinner hosted on Printables.com. Which is inspired by GoBiggeR's massive and expensive Pillbug spinner fidget.

https://youtu.be/v7TPFzHq09o

When spun, these fidgets will extend out their wings from centrifugal force. At slower speeds, the wings will pull back in. When spinning flat, sometimes the wings will stay out until the fidget is given a slight jolt.

Parts

• 3x2mm Cylinder Rare Earth Magnets (Amazon) x12
• M3-10 Grubs (aka, set screws) (eBay) x6
• Superglue
• 608 bearing.

Printing

• Core x2
• Rings
  • Ring_A x1
  • Ring_B x1
• Wing x6

Print the Rings and Wings at 100% infill - to make them slightly heavier and a better flywheel.
Print the wings with supports for the hinge and the top of the wing. I recommend manually drawn organic supports - for PrusaSlicer, this requires v2.6 or higher.

Assembly

https://youtu.be/T7IB6nCgf7U

1. Remove the wing supports either with small pliers or snips.
2. Fit six magnets into one ring. I recommend aligning their polarity for consistency. Use superglue to hold them down. These tiny magnets can suddenly go flying, and with uncured superglue on them - feel free to use safety glasses.
3. Add the 608 bearing to the center of a wing.
4. Combine the wings together to sandwich the 608 bearing and magnets in the middle.
5. Push the magnets into the wings. Make sure their polarity agrees with the polarity of the magnets in the ring.
6. Connect the wings to the ring sub-assembly with the M3-10 grubs.
7. Add the cores - make sure their tooth aligns with each other. Make sure to push inwards, as it's easy to sheer them (recommend using the v2 version).

See the video for more details.

Modifications

Changed from using a friction-fit filament axis to using a long grub instead. It uses M3 grubs because when testing M2 grubs, they were too delicate, and the screw drives kept stripping. The hinge bores on the wings are looser, so the wings can clear the grub threads. And to compensate for the extra looseness, it uses smaller magnets (3x2mm instead of 5x5mm).

The use of grubs instead of friction-fit filament makes it a lot easier to disassemble, which makes this more reusable and easier to mix and match parts after assembly.

The core was also redesigned to have just one tooth because the many smaller teeth kept breaking too easily. And it was made symmetrical, so you only need to print two of the same model instead of two similar but different models.

Updates

05/28/2023

• Reworded page contents.

05/28/2023

• Updated page contents.
• Added Core_v2.
  • A smaller friction fit radius.
  • Additional clearance between the core and the ring.
  • Added source .blend files