This week, a fast-rising post on the r/3Dprinting subreddit has forum members toying with brains, all-manner of educational knick-knacks in their hands.
The crux of the post is Redditor stevew91’s 3d printable augmented reality cube. It’s a simple print that you can download from Printables. It requires no support material, and if you print the cube in white filament and shade the raised surfaces, it can be tracked by a pair of smartphone apps, creating an augmented reality experience.
Wherever the cube goes, your selected superimposed object follows.
The model is available on Printables and is seemingly based on cube designs released for the Merge educational platform. There are two apps that can “read” the cube: Merge Object Viewer and Merge Explorer. Both are available on both Android and iOS, with some free models available to all, and further AR-viewable objects locked behind a paywall.
Plenty of Redditors point out that there’s nothing here that couldn’t be printed on paper and stuck together with glue. But where would the fun be in that?
Read that? Read these.
License: The text of "3D Print This Augmented Reality Cube, Hold Brains (And Other Things) In Your Hands" by All3DP is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.