Maypole Braiding Machine

thingiverse

As the tags suggest, this design is not practically printable. The design is largely made to mimic similar concepts, but on a much smaller scale. I have always found braiding machines wondrous for their simple nature, such that they have been around for more than a century. They are, however, rather difficult to print given all their moving parts which require clearances and may only be viable at large sizes, which obviously doesn't work for small home printers. Still the exercise of drawing up a quick design is quite fun. But holy moly is it difficult to design curves like this in Tinkercad. I keep thinking I should get professional software, but the masochist in me likes the manual manipulation, experimentation, and mathematics and geometry. As a result, I do not have "design files" because Tinkercad supplies none. As always, this was a treat to draw up, but it is not ready for application. If you have any feedback, please leave it in the comments.