On your mark
Get set
Fish on!
Yeehaw!
...or shazam!
What's the yeehaw of fishing?
I don't know
I don't really know anything about fishing
I just wanted to make a fishing game!
Welcome to Make Anything I'm Devin and today I want to share the creation of Space Fishing
my latest 3D printed game
Every year or so my friends throw a little outdoor festival called Moonbass
where we gather to dance, play, perform
and generally enjoy the company of awesome talented people
This year we went with an ocean theme
and that reminded me of a little fishing game my mom used to make when I was a wee lad
It involved some styrofoam fishes with washers glued on
that we could catch with a pole and string with a magnet on the end
woo!
It was a simple active game and clearly fun enough that I remember it to this day
Space Fishing is essentially the same game just updated with some 3D modeling
and 3D printing so that the line can actually be cast and reeled in which
makes things a bit more exciting and challenging even for adults
The game is still very straightforward
Lay out all the fishes on a blanket or perhaps in a small pool
and then set a timer and let the contestants duke it out to catch the most and highest value fishes
The larger fish are worth more with crabs being the most valuable
and as with most of my games the exact rules are kind of open-ended so
you just do what's the most fun for you
For me the most interesting part is actually the development and prototyping so in this
video I'm going to walk you through the steps I took to make all of this
Let's start by taking a look at the Space Fishes which have a couple of fun things going on
For one thing these are modeled with a bunch of print in place hinges and that makes them nice and floppy
If you've been in the 3D printing space for a while you've likely seen articulated models
like this before and I was excited to finally integrate them into a project
Technically each fish is made up of many individual parts but they're printed all at
once and designed in such a way that they won't come apart It's a pretty neat trick that's made
possible by the fact that FDM printing builds up parts layer by layer
That same fact actually makes it possible to embed these steel washers so they're totally locked into place
To pull that off I simply programmed my print to pause part way through
so I could drop in the washer and then resume the print
The printer then extrudes over the washer to enclose it within the print
Sure you can just glue the washers into place after printing
I forgot to embed it a few times so I did that too
but this way it's just way more cool and futuristic so
that's how we do it here at Make Anything
These worked out great but maybe I was a bit too ambitious with the crab
There were some tiny intricate parts that could break off
especially when tossed from a high fishing platform, for example
so I'll probably release a version without the movable claws as well
Anyways those are the Space Fishes
Kind of fun in their own right but naturally the star of this show is the fishing rod
and it did take me quite a few iterations to get things right
Here is prototype number one which was fully 3D printed
and I like to make my designs entirely printed whenever possible
just to save you all from having to source more materials
and I also like to make the parts small enough to print on most machines
so this is actually made up of a bunch of smaller parts that all snap together
which also lets me make it very colorful
Of course the fishing line was gonna be an exception
I haven't figured out how to print a good rope just yet
so I went with this five millimeter paracord
It's incredibly strong, very visible, and also nice and colorful so it's ideal
Oh and we do also need magnets so that we can actually catch our fish
so I made a lure that fits these neodymium magnets that I salvaged out of an old 3D printer
Overall I was very happy with the appearance of this rod although the spool is pretty large
I had no idea how much paracord I would have to fit on it because I didn't know how far
this thing would cast until I had it printed and ready to test
So once I did have it all assembled I went straight outside to give it a test
and it went about as poorly as it could
The fully 3D printed spool simply introduces way too much friction to unwind freely and
I wanted this to be really smooth so in the end I decided it would be worth adding some
metal bearings and a bolt That made a huge difference in the smoothness of this spool
So I added the bearings and took this new version out to test and it was still pretty whack
While the spool spins there was still enough resistance so the lure mostly just went straight down
The underhand throw worked a little bit better but still far from great
For my next iteration I decided to add some extra weight to the line
hoping that it would help overcome the resistance
and I designed this capsule similar to the lure except it holds nickels instead of magnets
First I tested it with a weight holding eight nickels and while
still not super satisfying I was finally getting some real distance
From there I tried adding a larger weight holding 12 nickels and my lure did get a bit farther but
it was also becoming a bit of a weapon
[it] smacked the wood and smashed it open so...
ummm
From there my next move was to try out some different lengths of rope between the lure and the weight
just to see how that affected my casting
The longer rope kind of just made things more chaotic so a shorter rope seemed like the way to go
I also decided to go with the eight nickel weight in the end since the difference was kind of
minimal and it just seems a bit more reasonable
So iteration after iteration I was slowly seeing improvements
but the final change that really made things work better was to increase the length of the pole
from two segments to three segments
So that's roughly a 50% increase in length
I really liked the form factor of the shorter rod
but the extra control and distance I got from this longer rod sold me
It's almost like fishing rods are made this way for a reason
hm
So this is the version of my fishing rod that I took to Moonbass and we had a blast fishing in space
When I came up with this game I was just expecting to play on flat ground but
having a platform to fish off of literally elevated the experience
Anyways I'm really proud of how this all comes together
so let's take a look at how this rod is assembled so you can make your own
Here we've got all the parts for making one rod
Lots of parts but it's a pretty simple build
Oh and this one I just forgot that
The pole segments are the largest parts 'with the lower one just fitting diagonally on the 300 by 250 millimeter build plate of my SV01 Pro
with the lower one just fitting diagonally on the 300mm x 250mm build plate of my SV01 Pro
All the parts are designed to print easily with no supports required
and I used my various Sovol 3D printers to pump them out
PLA filament works but I did use flexible TPU filament for some of the lures and weights
since they'll be flying around and smacking the ground
For the bearings I chose standard 608 ball bearings but we do want to introduce as little
friction as possible so I used a needle tool to remove the covers and used WD-40
to remove most of the grease and provide some lubrication
Now many people would argue that you should instead use alcohol followed by an oil or silicone-based lubricant
and they're probably right but this has always worked for me and it's what I did
For the fishing line I measured out 165 inches of paracord
and I'll burn the ends to keep it from fraying
You might not want to touch the molten nylon but again that's how I did it
We'll also want a shorter 12 inch section of cord to go between the weight and the lure
Now let's begin putting things together
I printed the rod segments with a brim for improved bed adhesion
and here I am scraping the edges with my X-Acto Knife to clean that up
That's pretty satisfying
The segments connect with a dovetail joint and that should be a relatively
tight fit and then these loops will snap over that to reinforce the connection
Despite printing with a brim I hadn't noticed that this part did warp a bit so I'll just
use a 3D pen to weld the parts together and then trim that up so I can still fit the loop in place
In general that's not a bad idea just for strengthening the rod
Next I'll add the grip which simply threads into place
and if you tighten it enough it should stay in place
Now I can pop in the two bearings and this spacer
All right spool time
This is the center of our spool and we'll feed one end of the long paracord through this hole and tie a knot
I know about as little about knots as I do about fishing
but this "double loopty" knot does the trick
Just get the knot as close to the end as possible so it fits into this little pocket
and then we'll encapsulate that with the right side of the spool and this three inch long 1/4-20" bolt
Then comes the left side of the spool and we'll feed all that through the spacer and bearings
It's a tight fit so you may have to thread it into place and that should leave just enough
threading to screw on this end cap that houses a nut and holds everything together
You should be able to tighten that with the spool still spinning freely
These caps are just decorative to cover the metal hardware though you may want to
glue them into place and then we've got this knob which has some flexing bits on the inside
that connect to this ridge
So we can just pop that into place and it should spin on its own
Now we can feed the other end of the cord through these loops
pull it all through and just reel it in to get a manageable length
For the weight we'll take the shorter paracord tie another knot and feed that through one side
Then we'll feed the long cord through the other half and tie that off as well
We'll load up the weight with our eight nickels which should fit fairly flush so
we can screw the halves all the way together Finally we'll feed the remaining loose end
of the cord through the top of the lure tie our knot and stuff that into the center of
these five magnets so it all fits in this little capsule and now we can catch fish
So that's what goes into constructing one of these rods It's not exactly print and play but
I personally had a lot of fun assembling these and it's really satisfying to just get it all together
so hopefully some of you are encouraged to give it a shot
These rods worked really smoothly and it's even ambidextrous
As I mentioned these worked quite well at Moonbass mostly without a hitch
There were a few times that this nut got loose from the constant reeling in and out
so I would suggest a little dollop of E6000 adhesive to keep that from coming undone
There was also this pastel rod which was printed entirely with PolyTerra Matte PLA
which looks fantastic but its layer adhesion is a bit weaker than your standard PLA filament
so the grip did end up snapping in half a few times during some especially chaotic fishing
So one solution would just be to print it with more perimeters or higher infill
but for the sake of providing a really robust solution I designed a second version that
has a hollow core and that houses an insert which is printed laying down and threaded into place
and this end cap just hides the bottom
The layer orientation of that core lends itself to a much stronger part
plus we get to keep the nice matte look of this PolyTerra filament
Lastly I couldn't actually source the magnets that I used for my original lures
so I also designed a second version for these magnetic hooks that are available on Amazon
and despite being quite a bit smaller they're actually comparable in magnetic strength
Besides that I'll always encourage you to remix the design to make it fit your own magnets or
different weights if you don't have US nickels
Honestly you could probably play this game with an actual fishing rod and it would be pretty awesome
so go nuts, have fun, do it your own way
All right that was a kind of complicated look at a rather simple and fun game
For the time being I'm gonna make these files available for free at MyMiniFactory so
check out the link in the description to make it for yourself
I'll also throw together a PDF with some written instructions for assembly and basic game rules
to make things as easy for you as possible
Now developing games like this is really fun but it also takes a lot of time and effort so if you
do get enjoyment out of my designs and are in a position to support me on Patreon or with a
MyMiniFactory tip that would be super appreciated
I love making my creations available to as many people as possible
and financial support from viewers like you is what lets me keep it up
Oh and you may be wondering how space comes into this whole "Space Fishing" game...
idk
Thanks for watching
I'm Devin this is Make Anything and as always
stay inspired!