What Is A Sphereicon?

A sphereicon is a device used to create a meandering motion when it roles. They where first create by an Israeli game and toy inventor.

They are interesting to design and making and even better to mess around with and watch role around. i decide to make one because they seemed like a challenge and an easy first project.

Unfortunately I couldn't get a video of how they role, something didn't work but if you google it there are loads.

Step 1:

Click the centre of the page and drag out to your chosen size, I dragged out to 50mm but you can go as small or as large as you want.

At this point you can also change the number of side the polygon has. however to get the role effect (which is the whole point of a sphereicon) the polygon needs to have an even number of side which is more than 4.

Step 2:

Next create a line going straight down the middle of the polygon, from the top to the bottom. This is giving us something to rotate around in a minute.

Go to the create menu and select the revolve tool. Select one side of the polygon the you split in half. Next in the revolve menu change from rotate to axis and then select the centre line that you made.

By default it will go to 360 degrees, but change it so it is 180 degrees as we only want to make half of it.

Step 3:

There are couple of different ways to do the next bit, but the simplest and easiest way is to turn the shape around by 180 degree, so you are know looking at the flat side,

Then draw another line going from the top left corner down to the bottom right corner. (Or from any opposite corners as long as they aren’t the top and bottom ones that we used before.)

Select the revolve tool again and select one side of the polygon that you just split in half. Next in the revolve menu change from rotate to axis and then select the line that you just made. Change to 180 degrees again if it is not already that.

Step 4:

At this point you can either print the model or you can spit it half and print it as 2 separate parts, then glue it together or you can design some way to slot them into each other.

I just printed as one as i had some problems doing the other ways.

To 3D print from fusion 360 select the make menu, then select the 3D print tool. click on the object or shape you want to print. choose your slicing program under the print utility. I used Cura but you can use what ever you have. Then just chose the scale you want to print at and print.

Step 5:

If you need to glue yours together or you need to slide to yours together do that but that’s it, you have made just designed and made your own sphereicon, you can try changing the number of side of the design. People have made a lot of creative and unusual designs that you could get inspiration from.