Hi All,
I created an open-source building toy last year. http://tintoy.posthaven.com The files to print the hubs of the building toy are available on Thingiverse here: http://www.thingiverse.com/thing:166730 As some of you may have seen in a post for week 4, I've also been messing around with another somewhat related idea for a really simple building toy: http://www.thingiverse.com/thing:301989
Last Saturday I had a booth at the Westport Mini Maker Faire in which I was primarily presenting my explorations creating light sculptures. http://bartels.posthaven.com/building-bigger-light-sculptures-by-going-modular I took along a small set of the building toy hubs in case anyone happened to be interested, as I've been using the pieces in some of my recent work.
I had the building toy pieces in a box off to the side and a number of times during the day kids noticed the pieces and started playing with them, quickly getting the hang of how they work. I regretted not having brought a bigger set of the pieces because it was really interesting watching how the kids were interacting with them. To the kids' parents I did a lot of explaining how I wanted to have an open-source building toy available for schools and families who might want to print and mod a building toy free of any copyright issues.
If any of you have access to a 3D printer, and could print some of these for kids to play with, it would be great to see what the kids create.
The only thing you need besides the 3D printed parts are nuts, bolts and wood dowels. Metal nuts and bolts work great. I mostly use nylon instead because it is lighter. I use 8/32 threaded rod with matching regular and/or wing nuts. http://www.amazon.com/dp/B000FMUZ4Y/ref=biss_dp_t_asn
Anyway, hope some of you might be interested in playing with this project.
Thanks,
Fred