Parametric Spiky Textured Magnetic Slider Fidget

Inspired by both the numerous spike-textured rollers and magnetic slider fidgets, this print combines them with some OpenSCAD-powered parametric magic to make a customizable, satisfying tactile toy! It uses "Gridfinity" sized 6x2mm round magnets, encased in the print so there's no glue needed!

Features

• 10 magnets (5 on each part) for lots of movement options: Slide the pieces back and forth, rotate them both by gears, or (my favorite) align the center magnet of one with the corner magnet of another and spin it like a clicky wheel!

• Spiky cube-corner texture

• Parametric size, thickness, and texture options

Printing Instructions

The model is just one side of the slider, so make sure you print two!

My settings:

0.10mm layer height

10% gyroid infill

I used 0.10mm layer height, as the default .2mm layer height resulted in the points of the texture being too wide, but I'd advise using your slicer's Cut function to cut out a small portion of the texture and try it out with different layer heights to see what works for you.

You need 10 magnets total, I got a stack of magnets, stuck one to a piece of metal, marked the exposed side with a permanent marker, stuck another to it, marked that exposed side, repeat until you have 10! For the magnets, just insert a pause on the layer that covers up the magnets (layer 25 if you're using my model and 0.10mm layers), then make sure all the magnets in each part are aligned the same, and that the magnets in the two parts are opposite (e.g. if you marked the magnets like I did, all 5 in one part are colored side up and all 5 in the other are colored side down)!

IMPORTANT: Keep a close eye on the first couple of layers after inserting the magnets, especially if you're using a steel nozzle, as the magnets might get pulled out of their holes!

This shouldn't be an issue if you have a magnetic print bed as the magnets are just 0.2mm from the bottom surface, but better safe than sorry! If you want, you can also put a (very) small drop of superglue in the hole before the magnet, but I haven't actually tested that so once again be very careful that none leaks out and coats your nozzle!

Surface Blob Prevention

Just doing that should be enough but can result in some surface globs after the layer pause (as seen in my photos), but there's a trick you can use to reduce/eliminate it with a fake color change:

Prusaslicer Instructions:

1. Set print settings as you desire (I did 0.10mm layer size as .2 made the texture too chunky, gyroid infill)

2. Go to Settings > Printers > General, set extruders to 2, and check "Single Extruder Multi Material"

3. Make sure both "extruders" are using the same filament settings

4. Slice the model, then go to the layer that first covers the magnet, right click the "+" in the layer slider, and change the extruder to extruder 2

5. Check that the wipe tower is present (which should just be an extra rectangle in the corner by default, you can make it smaller under Print Settings > Multiple Extruders > Wipe Tower)

6. Print the model, wait for it to pause, insert the magnets, then re-load the filament and resume!

Orca Slicer Instructions:

1. Set print settings as you desire (I did 0.10mm layer size as .2 made the texture too chunky, gyroid infill)

2. Go to your printer settings > Multimaterial, check "Single Extruder Multi Material" and exit the printer settings

3. Add a filament using the spool icon with a "+" above the filament dropdown, make sure the new one is using the same settings!

4. Slice the model, then go to the layer that first covers the magnet, right click the "+" in the layer slider, and change the filament to filament 2

5. Check that the wipe tower is present (which should just be an extra rectangle in the corner by default, you can make it smaller under Multimaterial > Prime Tower)

6. Print the model, wait for it to pause, insert the magnets, then re-load the filament and resume!

(The slicer only puts in a wipe tower when the color changes, so the fake color change is there to prime the extruder to avoid making a blob)

Customizing:

First, install OpenSCAD if you haven't already, then install the BOSL2 library.

Open the included OpenSCAD file (SpikeSlider_V1.scad) in OpenSCAD and click "render" to make sure the library was installed properly! Once you're done, make sure to do a full render (the cube+hourglass button, or F6), then click the "Export to STL" or File > Export > Export as STL to export the model!

The parameters will show up on the right panel, they are labeled and generally pretty self explanatory, but there are some quirks:

• While you're changing the parameters some red boxes will appear on the upper edges, those are responsible for rounding out the edges and will go away when you do a full render (either by clicking the render button in the top left or pressing F6, which you need to do before exporting the STL!)

• The total size of the slider will be the length + border, which I didn't realize until making this description... So the default parameters have length = 50 and border = 5, which results in a 55mm x 55mm slider

• The texture size and depth are passed into BOSL2's texture function, check here to see how those work, or just test them out to see the effects!

• If you set texture depth greater than or equal to the depth, the model will vanish and you'll get an error message, just set it lower to fix it! (Also if it's set too high the texture will intersect with the magnet holes, so be careful about that too!)

• When setting the magnet spacing make sure it's less than the side length, otherwise the magnet holes will be outside the model (which should be pretty obvious when you go to slice it)

• Also make sure the magnet spacing isn't too low, otherwise they might pull each other out of their spaces and just be more of a hassle overall!