I was looking for a D.I.Y. party-favor for a recent birthday when I found this great design for a Jumping Jack Robot on a Swedish design/kid’s blog. (Luckily the idea survives machine translation.) If you’re not familiar with “jumping-jack” (or “Pantin”) toys, the idea is that you pull on a string and a figure’s legs and arms jump up and down. It’s a classic toy, and easy to make. I remember seeing them in the American Boys Handy Book when I was a kid.
I recreated the design in Inkscape (a free open-source alternative to Adobe Illustrator) so I could make a bunch on the laser cutter. I left some little uncut tabs so the parts stay in place until you twist them away from the surrounding cardboard. (That way kids can color the parts easily before assembly.) I also added a finger loop on the head. (Could be an antenna or a giant eye too!)
Each kid got a 9″x12″ envelope with:
- 1 laser-cut sheet of robot parts
- 4 fasteners
(first I used nuts and bolts, but plastic rivets are easier for young kids) - About 26″ of string
- An instruction sheet (see below)
Laser Cutter File
SVG format (for Inkscape)
PDF format (for Illustrator & Corel Draw)
Red lines are cuts, blue lines are vector engraving
All lines are “hairlines” (.001″) which most lasers interpret as cuts, but might be nearly invisible in your graphics software. I recommend selecting all and increasing the stroke if you want to make changes. Then change it back to hairline before you send it to the laser.
Instruction Sheet (plastic rivets version)
SVG format (for Inkscape)
PDF format (for Illustrator & Corel Draw)
Instruction Sheet (nuts & bolts version)
SVG format (for Inkscape)
PDF format (for Illustrator & Corel Draw)
