Guest Curator Emmett Lalish has this to say about this 3DxMechanicals project: “This is one of the few gear-ball designs that I can say with confidence was in no way derived from mine. The math involved in this thing is quite spectacular; it has that awesome property of being regular while appearing irregular. Hats off to apal.”
Print the core, 12 pieces of gear A and B while 8 pieces of gear C. If you want to use 2 M6 hex keys to rotate (see video), print 2 pieces of gear A_hex6 and 10 of gear A, instead. Use the M3x10 screws to mount the gears to the core.
The core is a partially truncated version of the dual of the truncated octahedron. The dual of the truncated octahedron is also known as tetrakis hexahedron. The core has 24 not-so-regular pentagonal faces and 8 regular hexagonal faces. Mount gears A and B to the not-so-regular pentagonal faces accordingly, then gears C to the hexagonal faces. Gear A has 27, gear B has 18 while gear C has 21 teeth.
Stop breadboarding and soldering – start making immediately! Adafruit’s Circuit Playground is jam-packed with LEDs, sensors, buttons, alligator clip pads and more. Build projects with Circuit Playground in a few minutes with the drag-and-drop MakeCode programming site, learn computer science using the CS Discoveries class on code.org, jump into CircuitPython to learn Python and hardware together, TinyGO, or even use the Arduino IDE. Circuit Playground Express is the newest and best Circuit Playground board, with support for CircuitPython, MakeCode, and Arduino. It has a powerful processor, 10 NeoPixels, mini speaker, InfraRed receive and transmit, two buttons, a switch, 14 alligator clip pads, and lots of sensors: capacitive touch, IR proximity, temperature, light, motion and sound. A whole wide world of electronics and coding is waiting for you, and it fits in the palm of your hand.
Have an amazing project to share? The Electronics Show and Tell is every Wednesday at 7:30pm ET! To join, head over to YouTube and check out the show’s live chat – we’ll post the link there.
