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Models shared by the SO3D.xyz community. Open any of them in the generator to see exactly how it was built, remix it, or print it as-is. Browse the model library by category

Preview of Vanishing-coin magic box
By Krypto
Complexity
Multi-part assembly
MAIN PURPOSE: Drop a coin in, shake, open the lid, and it has gone
A magician's prop with a secret in the floor. Show the empty box, drop in a coin, close the lid and give it a shake so everyone hears it rattle. Then, holding it from underneath, tilt it slightly towards you: the coin slides through a hidden slot along the floor edge straight into your palm. Shake again (silence), lift the lid, and the box is empty. Produce the coin from a spectator's ear for the finish.
AR view Open in app
Preview of Micrometeorite hunting kit
By Krypto
Complexity
Advanced
MAIN PURPOSE: Find real space dust in your roof gutter with a wash tray, a magnet sleeve and a loupe
Tonnes of space dust land on Earth every day, and in 2017 the amateur scientist Jon Larsen proved you can find it on city rooftops. Scoop sludge from a gutter, WASH it in water and pour off the mud, DRY it, then pass the MAGNET sleeve through it: most micrometeorites contain iron, so they cling to it. Pull the magnet out over the FIND bay and the grains drop free. Under a 60x loupe, look for tiny shiny spheres with a pattern of crystal stripes, 4.6-billion-year-old visitors from space.
AR view Open in app
Preview of Earwig pest-control hotel
By Krypto
Complexity
Simple
MAIN PURPOSE: House earwigs in fruit trees so they eat the aphids overnight
Earwigs are night hunters of aphids, codling-moth eggs and other pests, and fruit growers have hung straw-filled pots in their trees for centuries to keep them close. Fill this hexagonal hotel with straw, hang it open end down from a cane or branch in an apple, plum or pear tree, and earwigs move in to hide by day and hunt by night. Move it to wherever the aphids are worst. (Keep it out of dahlias, which earwigs like to nibble.)
AR view Open in app
Preview of Cube-fruit growing box
By Krypto
Complexity
Multi-part assembly
MAIN PURPOSE: Grow square cucumbers, courgettes or mini melons inside a clear box
Japanese farmers first grew square watermelons in the 1970s so they would stack in shops and fit in fridges. This clear box does the same for smaller crops. Slip a young cucumber, courgette, mini melon or even an apple into it while it is still small, rest the stem in the notch and put the lid on. As it grows it fills the box and takes its shape, coming out a near-perfect cube with sharp corners. The drain holes stop rain pooling inside.
AR view Open in app
Preview of Sphinx rep-tile nesting trays
By Krypto
Complexity
Simple
MAIN PURPOSE: Fill one sphinx-shaped tray exactly with four smaller trays of the same shape
Very few shapes are rep-tiles, shapes that four copies of themselves can tile into a bigger copy of the same shape. The sphinx, six triangles in a lopsided trapezoid, is one of the strangest, found in the 1960s. Print one big tray and four half-size trays: the four small sphinxes fit perfectly inside the big one (turn two of them over), and each of those could in turn be filled with four even smaller ones, forever. A desk tray that doubles as a puzzle.
AR view Open in app
Preview of Salt-dance sound visualiser
By Krypto
Complexity
Simple
MAIN PURPOSE: Watch salt jump into patterns on a membrane over a phone speaker
Sound is invisible until you give it something to move. Slide a phone in through the slot, stretch cling film tight over the top like a drum skin and sprinkle on a little salt. Play a tone-generator app and sweep slowly from 100 to 600 Hz: at certain notes the salt suddenly leaps into rings, stars and grids as the membrane vibrates in sections, and between them it goes still. These are the patterns, called cymatics, that Ernst Chladni showed with a violin bow in 1787.
AR view Open in app
Preview of Crystal-radio chassis
By Krypto
Complexity
Advanced
MAIN PURPOSE: Build a radio that needs no battery and plays AM stations from the radio waves alone
A radio with no battery, no plug and no power at all: the radio waves themselves drive the earpiece. Wind a coil on the tall tube, screw the aerial, ground, diode and earpiece wires to the six terminal holes, and slide a wire along the coil to tune in. This is how people listened in the 1920s, and how soldiers built "foxhole radios" from razor blades in the Second World War. It is quiet and magical: a voice from far away out of nothing.
AR view Open in app
Preview of Kanizsa illusion snack trays
By Krypto
Complexity
Simple (set)
MAIN PURPOSE: Set four notched trays together and a bright square appears that is not there
Put four of these round trays in a square with their notches pointing inwards and a bright white square appears between them, with crisp edges that do not exist. It is the Kanizsa illusion: your brain fills in the outline of a shape it expects to see. Fill them with snacks and watch guests swear the square is there. Cats seem to see it too: in a 2021 citizen-science study, pet cats sat in the invisible square about as often as in a real one.
AR view Open in app
Preview of Air-pruning seedling cell
By Krypto
Complexity
Advanced
MAIN PURPOSE: Grow seedlings whose roots branch at the slotted walls instead of circling the pot
In a solid pot, roots hit the wall and circle round and round, and plants struggle after transplanting. In this cell, the walls are full of tall slots: when a root tip reaches the air at a slot, it dries and stops, and the plant sends out new side roots instead. The result is a dense, fibrous root ball that grabs the soil the moment it is planted out. Nurseries call it air-pruning; it is ideal for trees, tomatoes and anything with a long taproot.
AR view Open in app
Preview of In-bed worm tower
By Krypto
Complexity
Multi-part assembly
MAIN PURPOSE: Compost kitchen scraps right inside a raised bed through a worm tower
Instead of carrying compost to the plants, bring the compost to the plants. Bury the lower half of this tower in a raised bed, drop in some compost worms and feed it vegetable scraps through the lid. Worms come and go through the windows near the bottom, eating the scraps inside and leaving their rich castings out in the bed around the roots. The lid keeps flies and smells in, and one tower feeds roughly a metre of bed.
AR view Open in app

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