Origin of the project:

Rotadraw is a nice activity for kids from age 4+ as for adults, similar to the classical “lining the dots”.

It consists into simple steps: 

1. Lining up the notch in the stencil with the mark on the holder.

2. Rotate the marking No. 1 to the top and trace the line with the No.1 next to it.

3. Rotate the marking No. 2 to the top and trace the next line.

4. Repeat these steps to reveal the full drawing.

Rotadraw was voted the Educational Toy of the Year in Britain in 1969

While many designs and themes were commercialized at the time on sets of 150mm discs,

maker TanyaAkinora published on printables nice original models of 140mm Rotadraw discs.

When exploring the current offer for 3d printable Rotadraw, I saw that the models of makers Stringham, THIMM1 & Maker Stegz on Makerworld had an interesting feature that I decided to add the the original TanyaAkinora models.

I uploaded the different models with both monocolor & bicolor print profiles. Bicolor is recommended to help smaller kids figuring out the numbers easier.

I added to the original model a rectangular frame directly imprinted on the stencil, which show exactly where the drawing will be located on the piece of paper when notch #1 is aligned to the reference notch. 

This is super useful when you want to put more drawing on the same piece of paper, for instance when using my dedicated Rotadraw base for holding A4 paper in place. Don't hesitate to try it. It is super mega convenient, for adults, kids … and make the Rotadraw experience super easy even for kids aged 4+.

To try it is to adopt it !

Each disc has in addition a central hole which you can use to fix the disc to the paper with a pin.

Have fun … and maybe have a look at my Spirograph base for holding A4 paper in place. This is super nice creative activity as well.

Making your own designs:

In case you want to make your own designs, here are a few resources I was able to gether:

• Nice video on How to make a Rotadraw
• Excellent example by Adrien Cosson on how to make a Rotadraw directly in Onshape.
  This is a public document, so you can duplicate it to start your own creations.
• When your create the stencil, try to position the drawing frame from the begining… because if you start doing that at the end (or try to figure out the frame from the finalized disc)… it requires a LOT of work

☕ Enjoying the design?

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