A poseable desk crawler you print

Web Crawler

Eight thin legs, one dot eye, and a taste for links. Print 83 parts, snap them together by hand, and pose it anywhere on your desk.

A black bar body, one eye on top near the front, and 8 legs in a mirror-symmetric fan. It stands 8.4 × 7.1 × 3.0 in. Scroll, and an animation walks it down the page. The real crawler has no motor: you set every step by hand.

Each hip is a 12 mm ball turning in a socket in the body side. It tips up to ±35° from rest in any direction. Each knee is a ball hinge that opens from 45° to 150°. Friction holds the pose.

83 printed parts: one black body and two leg sets, cyan and pink, and orange and violet. Each set is an eye plug and, for each of the 8 legs, a hip ball, an upper rod, a knee sphere, a lower rod and a foot. No glue, no screws, no electronics.

Print it in PETG with a 0.4 mm nozzle. The body prints on its underside with no supports, and the rods print lying flat. Start with the body, one hip ball and one upper rod, and check the fit.

Crouch it low, stand it tall, or lift a front leg to wave. Every pose here stays inside the real joint limits, and friction holds it there.

Free roam

Take it for a walk

Drag to circle the crawler. Pick a colorway and a pose, or let it wander the references and tear up the links. The walking is animation; the printed crawler stands where you pose it.

Colorway
Pose

Every pose uses the real joint limits: hips tip up to ±35°, knees open from 45° to 150°. The feet step to each new pose; they never slide.

Specifications

What you print

Size

Standing
8.4 × 7.1 × 3.0 in 214 × 181 × 77 mm, legs spread
Body
2.6 × 1.2 × 1.1 in 66 × 30 × 28 mm
Each leg
2.3 in upper rod, 3.1 in lower rod 58 mm and 78 mm, 4.4 mm thick
Joint spheres
0.47 in across 12 mm

Parts

83 printed parts, snapped together by hand:

  • 1 body
  • 2 leg sets of 41 parts, one per colorway
  • Each set: 1 eye plug, 8 upper rods, 8 lower rods, 8 hip balls, 8 knee spheres and 8 foot spheres

No glue, no screws, no electronics.

Joints

  • Hips. A ball turning in a socket in the body side. The upper rod tips up to ±35° from rest in any direction.
  • Knees. A sphere with a ball hinge. The angle between the rods opens from 45° to 150°.
  • 16 friction joints in all. Friction holds the pose.

Colorways

  • Cyan and pink. Cyan rods, pink spheres and eye.
  • Orange and violet. Orange rods, violet spheres and eye.

Both leg sets share the one black body. Each leg stays in one piece: pop the 8 hip balls out of the body and snap in the other set.

For the printer

  • PETG with a 0.4 mm nozzle.
  • The body prints on its underside with no supports. The rods print lying flat.
  • Print the body, one hip ball and one upper rod first, and check the fit before you print the rest.

What has been checked

  • The geometry passed print checks: walls at a 0.4 mm nozzle, a support-free body, and bed fit.
  • Zero interferences between parts, and 31 motion sweeps of the joints.
  • Pose-holding friction is computed from the fit, not tested.

Eight legs, one eye, and a page full of links to get through.