Maker Guide

How to Make Your Own Spirograph: Pick the Pattern, Then Print or Cut the Set

I have loved Spirographs since I was a child: the ring taped to the paper, the pen in a little hole, and the moment the line meets itself and a flower appears. What I never had was a choice. The patterns were whatever came in the box. The Spirograph Set Designer turns that around: you pick the pattern first, and the tool makes the set that draws it. My first print worked on the first try, and it was fast.

Pick the pattern first

The tool runs in your browser with no account. The Drawing view rolls the wheel round the ring and draws the pattern your pen will make. Change the ring teeth or the wheel teeth and it draws again. The Pattern view shows the finished result for every hole at once, inside the ring and around its outer teeth; click a faint curve to switch to that hole.

The math under the pen

The number of petals is the ring's teeth divided by the largest factor it shares with the wheel: 96 and 60 share 12, so 8 petals in 5 laps. Teeth that share nothing, like 96 and 35, draw dense lace. Some ratios draw named shapes: 3 to 1 a rounded triangle, 4 to 1 a four-pointed star, 2 to 1 an ellipse. The Shapes presets set those up in one click.

3D print or laser cut

Pick 3D Printing for an STL or Laser cutting for an SVG. The printed set lies flat with no supports, the biggest wheel nested inside the ring, raised hole numbers, and pen holes that widen toward the top so cone-tipped pens seat deep. The laser file has red cut lines and blue engraved numbers. The 3D set is the one I have printed and drawn with; the laser version is new.

Draw with it

• Tape the ring to the paper, or pin it to a cork board through its three small holes.
• Set a wheel inside with the teeth meshed.
• Put a pen in hole 1, press lightly outward and go round until the line meets itself.
• Change the hole or the wheel and layer a new colour.

In the classroom

One set serves a table of four. Each student picks a wheel and a hole, predicts the petal count from the teeth, draws it, and the table compares: factors, ratios and symmetry, and everyone leaves with a drawing they made.