…After several years of working as a freelance 3D artist working on everything from games to commercial projects, his focus jumped from digital 3D content to creating physical 3D printable robotic toys.
His love for 3D printing started when he was invited by a Moscow company to develop robotic toys for a project they were working on. In the process, Kolsenik rekindled his interest in science fiction movies and robots and decided that he wanted to continue designing physical robot toys full-time. However, being far away from Moscow meant that having access to a 3D printer was difficult and he wasn’t prepared to pay for his own desktop 3D printer. Eventually, he purchased an Ultimaker 2 in 2013 and has since been creating some of the best 3D printed toy robots that we’ve ever seen.
Fueled by the ease of being able to sketch, model and fabricate his own toys, Kolsenik has been focused on designing multiple toy collections now that he has a full-fledged design and production studio in his own home. Among the collections he has been working on include Robot Beetles and Bugs, Robots inspired by countries and a kid-friendly series that focuses on silly aliens.
For the 3D prints, Kolsenik approaches each design so that it is strategically-built up vertically and able to be printed without support material, which ultimately creates a higher quality finished product. Because the final designs have moving parts, it can take up to 4 days to create a single robot toy. The final prints are printed using PLA, which allows Kolesnik to get as much detail in his prints as he can off of his Ultimaker 2….
Every Thursday is #3dthursday here at Adafruit! The DIY 3D printing community has passion and dedication for making solid objects from digital models. Recently, we have noticed electronics projects integrated with 3D printed enclosures, brackets, and sculptures, so each Thursday we celebrate and highlight these bold pioneers!
Have you considered building a 3D project around an Arduino or other microcontroller? How about printing a bracket to mount your Raspberry Pi to the back of your HD monitor? And don’t forget the countless LED projects that are possible when you are modeling your projects in 3D!
The Adafruit Learning System has dozens of great tools to get you well on your way to creating incredible works of engineering, interactive art, and design with your 3D printer! We also offer the LulzBot TAZ – Open source 3D Printer and the Printrbot Simple Metal 3D Printer in our store. If you’ve made a cool project that combines 3D printing and electronics, be sure to let us know, and we’ll feature it here!
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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 and our Discord!