Polish designer creates this awesome kaleidoscope using 3D printing

Apr. 15, 2015 | By Alec

That 3D printers are perfect for making simple toys is hardly a secret. After all, the web is filled with downloadable designs for basic toys you can make on just about any 3D printer. But more complex toys, that actually do something, are much more difficult to make and therefore much rarer. But it’s always inspiring and nostalgic to see attempts to recreate toys that really take us back to the nineties, just like this 3D printed kaleidoscope.

This kaleidoscope has been designed and assembled by Polish designer Paweł Grzelak, who was looking for a nice and original birthday gift for a friend. ‘It’s always nice to make something yourself, not to just buy something,’ he told us. And as a kaleidoscope is a childhood-defining toy, the choice was easy.

Now I can’t have been the only child who thought that kaleidoscopes must’ve been full of chemicals or something, but they are actually surprisingly easy to make with a bunch of rectangular mirrors and something for light to filter through. In fact, making them yourself will enable you to change the contents and control the effects for yourself – something impossible about the childhood versions. ‘The one boring thing about kaleidoscopes I remembered from my childhood, was that the contents (crystals or whatever it is), can't be changed,’ Paweł laments. ‘So I decided to make my own, without this flaw.’

Actually assembling the kaleidoscope isn’t so complicated. In Paweł design three parts have been made with a 3D printer, specifically the tubes that hold the mirrors and parts in place. These parts e designed himself before 3D printing them on his own Zortrax M200 in white ABS filament. Aside from them, you’ll need a paper tube (for instance from kitchen paper), as well as three glass circles and three identical mirrors to reflect the light around.

As Paweł explains to us, these mirrors are fitted throughout the tube. ‘On "eye end" of Kaleidoscope we put in first printed part. At the other end, there are the second and third parts. Both have threads so they can be joint together, making the space where the effect-creating contents are kept,’ he explains. The three glass panels are subsequently used to close both ends and keep all contents in place. Finally, there’s just the matter of filling the compartment with parts to create the effects with. You can add plastic crystals, buttons, or whatever you have laying around. Every filling creates different effects, and with this design it’s easy to just unscrew the ends and add a different filling when you’d like to try something new.

And as you can see in the video above – which Olga Cytowska – made for him, the kaleidoscope works perfectly. It’s a fun project that truly captures the creative potential of 3D printing technology – we don’t have to stick to planters and dust-collecting desk fillers, but you can make anything you’d like.