Designing a Fully 3D-Printed Mechanical Calculator

What happened

This fascination, along with the mind-bendingly high prices for commercial digital calculators led [3D all Workshop] to spend 2 months on designing his own mechanical calculator . Even if almost tragically impractical in a world where digital calculators are cheap as chips, mechanical calculators and their big mechanical computer brethren remain an absolute marvel of engineering.

Using nothing but elements like simple gears their motion is used to calculate everything from a simple multiplication to the proper targeting instructions for an Iowa-class battleship’s guns. In the video the design process and troubleshooting step are covered along with the workings of the mechanisms for both addition and multiplication. Naturally this isn’t the first 3D-printed mechanical calculator, not to mention ones made from wood , but always it’s pretty cool to see one made from first fundamentals.