Collapsible Carrot

Nice collapsible carrot which can be magically pulled from your hand. Or from a combination safe lock box or from an egg shell.

Prints mostly in place, just the carrot tip have to be inserted into the collapsed carrot body and pushed firmly (e.g. by a screwdriver) until it clicks in. Best done while the main body is still on the printing plate. Then get it off the plate and pull the tip to get loose whatever may be stuck. UPDATE: Try the new v2 variant, it does not stick (I just rotated the smallest cone 90deg to print bridges in a better position.)

The leaf is best inserted like this:  One side first (keeping the bigger side of the leaf in your fingers), press by thumb. Works nice for PETG, might be still a bit tricky with PLA. (I added more springy variant leaf-PLA.stl, you can try it out.)

Pull the carrot tip to fix it in the expanded form. Or pull in the middle and then put it on the table half-collapsed. Push to collapse it again.

Sorry, it is addictive. You did not think that you would play with collapsible carrots but once you print this, you will :) Fidget switch is nothing compared to the utmost carrot-like feeling and even the sound when you pull it by the tip and then collapse (yes, repeatedly).

Special thanks go to three nice men in Japan (Yoshida family, father and sons) who let me drive their wonderful train at Ashinomaki-Onsen Station (Aizu-Wakamatsu, Fukushima) and I gave them my carrots in return. 本当にありがとうございます！❤  I'll never forget the joy in their faces. Normally it is them who gives joy to others so this small return was really well deserved.

You can also play checkers with it. Print carrots in two colors. Fix it in a bigger size to make a queen.

If you slice it yourself, check the top layers - flat top with a round hole is a bit tricky to print, I made very minimalist hexagonal progressive bridges to support it. These expect a 0.3 mm layer. Also two small parts use bridges (to keep the tip in place, and also the part next to the tip), these are much less sensitive.

It inspired my wife Denisa Vostra to draw the image of “Mrkvoun”. Normally she writes Czech books but sometimes she draws funny pictures and sometimes she writes short funny poems with it.

She also recently invented a non-destructive baptism of new books using the collapsible carrots! In the collapsed state, the carrot resembles a glass and you can pour the carrot out and the book is not wet. You may notice multiple Czech celebrities on the picture - people who are even much better known to the public than this carrot is :)

Finally, thanks for all the downloads and likes. I'd always appreciate more makes. I already added the PLA leaf variant and improved assembly instructions based on the feedback from makes. Happy to hear more!