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Let's Create CUBORO-style Toys with PolyScript!
Hello, I'm PolyGoro.
In this article, I'll show you how to create a CUBORO-style educational toy using PolyScript.
If you're wondering what PolyScript is, please check this out first:
Do you know CUBORO?
CUBORO is a wooden educational toy born in Switzerland. They look like 5cm cube blocks, but they have grooves carved into the surface and tunnels running through the inside, allowing you to combine them to create tracks for marbles to roll through.
It became a hot topic after the professional shogi player Sota Fujii mentioned playing with it as a child, and it has become very popular as an educational toy that "nurtures spatial awareness and logical thinking."
However, CUBORO costs several tens of thousands of yen for a basic set, making it quite expensive. As an imported product, it has also been difficult to obtain at times due to low stock.
"Then I'll just make it myself," I thought, so I used this toy as a reference to create my own 3D model.
Releasing KoroCube for Free
Since it's a model based on a commercial product, I hesitated to release it, but after some research, I found that CUBORO was invented a long time ago and its patents have already expired. As long as I avoid the trademark, there shouldn't be any issues, so I am releasing it as KoroCube, an improved version of CUBORO designed for 3D printers.
Download
If you're thinking, "Honestly, I don't really get 3D modeling or PolyScript, but I'm interested in the toy!"—don't worry. You can download the STL files and print them with a 3D printer to play with them right away.
You can skip the modeling explanation and try rolling marbles with your children first. That alone is plenty of fun.
About Size
The model is created at a 5cm scale, but if you print a lot, it will take up a lot of space, so it's perfectly fine to scale it down to 3cm in your slicer. I have 3cm blocks myself, so I print them at 3cm to play with those.
However, if you scale it down to 3cm, standard 16mm marbles won't fit in the grooves. Please prepare smaller marbles, around 12mm in diameter. I found small marbles at a 100-yen shop.
Block Introduction
From here on, I will introduce each KoroCube block one by one.
Basic Block (1.stl)
This is just a simple cube. It has no grooves or holes, but it is indispensable for serving as a base for the course or for height adjustment. With PolyScript, you can describe it in just one line.
box 50 50 50 | fillet 2
Create a 50mm cube and round the edges by 2mm. That is all there is to it. By rounding the corners with fillet, the texture becomes smoother, making it safe for children to touch.
Tunnel Blocks (2.stl, 3.stl)
These blocks have tunnels running through the center. There are variations in the grooves. These are standard CUBORO parts.
This block is also a similar tunnel block, but it requires a little ingenuity when printing on a 3D printer.
With fused deposition modeling (FDM) 3D printers, horizontal holes create overhangs (parts floating in the air) that cannot be printed cleanly without support material. To avoid this issue, in KoroCube, the top of the horizontal hole is made into a triangle.
| faces >X
| circle HR | polygon 4 (HR-1) at: 0 4 | cut
By layering a diamond shape on top of the circle and cutting it, the ceiling of the hole becomes triangular. This makes the angle of the overhang shallower, allowing it to be printed cleanly without any support material. This is a well-known technique for 3D printer enthusiasts.
Drop Blocks (11.stl, 12.stl)
While the blocks so far have featured straight tunnels, these blocks have curved tunnels running through them. As marbles roll along the curves, the possibilities for course design expand significantly.
For this block, I used wire to draw the path of the curve and sweep to create the shape of the tunnel. It is slightly advanced modeling, but in PolyScript, it can be written in just a few lines. I will explain the code in detail in the next article.
Goal Blocks (M.stl, MK.stl)
Let's Play with the Kids
Once you have printed the blocks, please try playing with your children right away.
At first, simply stacking 2 or 3 blocks and rolling a marble from the top is enough. The moment the marble rolls with a "clatter..." and is sucked into the tunnel through the groove, the children's eyes will light up. If they can't stop saying "One more time!", then it's a huge success.
As the number of blocks increases, designing the course becomes more like a puzzle. It's fun to engage in trial and error, thinking, "It should turn here, drop here... oh, it doesn't connect!" Even adults can get quite absorbed in it.
Future Plans
Next time, I will introduce how to create curved tunnels using wire and sweep in PolyScript. These are parts that enable smooth marble movements that cannot be expressed with straight lines alone. I will also be making original KoroCube parts, so stay tuned!
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