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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 Venus flower-basket wedding vase
By Krypto
Complexity
Medium
MAIN PURPOSE: Hold wedding flowers in a lattice vase modelled on a deep-sea glass sponge
The Venus flower basket is a deep-sea sponge with a skeleton of glass lattice so strong that engineers copied it for the Gherkin in London. A pair of tiny shrimp swim in when young, grow too big to leave, and live inside together for life, so in Japan the dried sponge is a traditional wedding gift. This tall, round-cornered vase has the same diagonal lattice cut right through its walls; drop a test tube inside, add two stems for the couple, and the light pours through the walls.
AR view Open in app
Preview of Tulou round-house organiser
By Krypto
Complexity
Simple
MAIN PURPOSE: Sort desk things into twelve rooms round a courtyard, like a Fujian tulou
The Hakka people of Fujian built tulou: round earth fortresses where a whole village lived in a ring of identical rooms facing a shared courtyard, with a single gate. This organiser is a little tulou for the desk. Twelve wedge-shaped rooms ring the round courtyard, which takes a cup or a plant, and an arched gate opens into the front room. Give every family member, colour or project its own room.
AR view Open in app
Preview of Levitating-pencil desk base
By Krypto
Complexity
Medium
MAIN PURPOSE: Float a pencil in mid-air on ring magnets, touching only a little end plate
A pencil that hangs in the air above the desk. Disc magnets pressed into the four sockets push up against two ring magnets slid onto the pencil, so it floats with nothing underneath it, held in line by its point resting lightly on the end plate. Flick it and it spins silently for a long time. Glue a coin or a small mirror on the end plate for the smoothest spin.
AR view Open in app
Preview of Ames-room illusion box
By Krypto
Complexity
Simple
MAIN PURPOSE: Make two identical toys look like a giant and a dwarf through a peephole
Look through the peephole and the room looks like an ordinary box, but it is not: the back wall runs at a slant, so the left corner is twice as far away as the right. Put two identical figures in the back corners and one looks like a giant and the other like a dwarf. Move a figure along the back wall and it grows or shrinks before your eyes. It is the Ames room, invented in 1946 and used in films to make actors look tiny next to wizards.
AR view Open in app
Preview of Cloud-chamber cosmic-ray base
By Krypto
Complexity
Simple
MAIN PURPOSE: See the trails of cosmic-ray particles in a home-made cloud chamber
Invisible particles from space pass through you every second, and this lets you see them. Put a slab of dry ice in the base, lay a 3 mm aluminium plate painted matt black on the ledge, and turn a clear plastic tub upside down on the plate with a strip of felt soaked in 99% isopropyl alcohol stuck inside its top. After ten minutes, turn off the lights and shine a torch in from the side: thin white trails appear and vanish as muons, alpha and beta particles streak through the alcohol mist, just as in the chambers that won Nobel prizes.
AR view Open in app
Preview of Phone-screen photoelastic viewer
By Krypto
Complexity
Simple
MAIN PURPOSE: See the hidden stress in clear plastic as rainbows using a phone screen
Your phone screen gives out polarised light, which is half of a stress lab. Lay the phone in the bottom showing a white page, slide a piece of clear plastic in through the slot (a protractor, a CD case, a plastic fork) and put polariser film on the ledge above. Look down and the plastic lights up in rainbow bands wherever it is strained. Squeeze the fork and watch the colours race. Engineers use exactly this, called photoelasticity, to find weak spots in parts.
AR view Open in app
Preview of Moon-crater impact tray
By Krypto
Complexity
Medium
MAIN PURPOSE: Drop pebbles into flour and cocoa from marked heights to make lunar craters
How did the Moon get its craters? Fill the tray with 3 cm of flour, dust cocoa over the top, and drop a marble from the 10 cm mark on the back board, then from the 20 cm mark. Each impact punches out a crater and throws white flour across the dark cocoa in bright rays, just like the rays round the crater Tycho. Compare sizes, heights and weights, then smooth it over and start again.
AR view Open in app
Preview of Stream-table river maker
By Krypto
Complexity
Medium
MAIN PURPOSE: Watch water carve rivers, meanders and a delta in a tray of sand
A geography lesson that builds itself. Fill the tray with damp sand, pour water into the tall cup at the mountain end, and it seeps out through a small hole at the bottom to carve a river down the slope. Watch it meander, cut banks, braid into channels and drop a fan-shaped delta where it reaches the SEA end, where a drain hole lets the water out. Change the slope with a book under the cup and see how a steep river behaves differently from a gentle one.
AR view Open in app
Preview of UV-bead sunscreen tester
By Krypto
Complexity
Medium
MAIN PURPOSE: Prove a sunscreen still works with beads that change colour in sunlight
Is last summer's sunscreen still any good? Fill both dishes with UV colour-change beads, stretch cling film over each, and rub a little sunscreen onto the film over the SPF dish. Put them in the sun: the BARE beads turn bright purple and pink in seconds, while the protected beads stay pale if the sunscreen is working. Try different brands, factors and old bottles, or wipe some off to see why you need to reapply.
AR view Open in app
Preview of Solargraph sun-trail camera
By Krypto
Complexity
Multi-part assembly
MAIN PURPOSE: Record six months of the sun's path on one sheet of photo paper
A camera with a six-month exposure. In a dark room, curl a sheet of ordinary photographic paper round the inside of the back wall, close the lid and tape it. Strap the box to a post or railing facing the sun (south in the northern hemisphere) and leave it from one solstice to the next. When you open it, do not develop the paper: scan it. Every sunny day has burned its own arc across the sky, with the gaps showing the cloudy days, over a ghostly image of the view.
AR view Open in app

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