Having custom-made 3D Printed foosball players for your foosball tables is a pretty cool idea and with 3D printing that is actually pretty easy to do! If you are a fooser and you are looking for another 3D printing project you could do, I strongly suggest you refresh your table with new customized 3d printed foosball players, but before you roll up your sleeves, there are things you should know about designing a foosball player.
Think about the number of players you need to do so you can organize your budget and time. There are two options for you; you can make a 1-man goalie and a 3-man goalie configuration. A 1-man goalie has 1 goalie on the last rod, in front of the goal. A 3-man goalie has 3 players on the same rod. Now, when you look at the overall number of players, 1-man goalie has 22 players (11 for each team) and 3-man goalie has 26 – 4 more players (13 for each team).
Now, let’s look at the design of a foosball player. The design is pretty simple, but since you are doing your own foosball players why don’t you spice things up? You can make them look like your favorite movie characters or members of some band, or you can make them look like you, your friends or family.
The head is yours to decorate, but everything else has rules you have to follow. For example, you have to keep in mind that the players must fit on the rod, which means that you have to measure the hole of the players very carefully. The hole should be a perfect fit for the width of the rod or you won’t be able to use the player. The same thing is with the size of the player. The best thing would be to take an existing player and measure those two things so you don’t have to guess anything.
Another advantage of 3D Printing your own foosball players is the fact that you can improve the design of the most important part of a foosball player – the foot. You hit the ball with the foot and that means it must be perfect. Avoid round feet because those feet can hit the ball in different directions and make a rectangular feet. I strongly suggest that you make the entire foot like a rectangular because if you have real feet and rectangular below, you can still hit the ball with feet and we want to avoid that. Also, if you want to completely improve performance, slightly tilt the rectangular. There is one more thing you can do and that is for the ultimate game control which can help you make tricks. On the slightly tilted surface make a cross-hatch which will allow you better ball control.
With unique foosball players made to make you experience ultimate ball control, you will improve your foosball skills fast and you will have a special foosball table like nobody else.
If You like Foosball and would like to 3D Print Players and build your own table you can Find Mark on his own blog Here And here you can find the STL files for foosball-players on thingiverse.
This is a great idea. I’d like to see a star wars theme.
We Should request Micke Askernäs to make one 😀 Or you could find some Iron Man Players here 🙂
These are awesome! I you could use meshmixer to make 3D characters for each team.
This is a neat idea. I wonder what material would work best? ABS?
This is the coolest use of 3d printing.
Have a contest of design for a Foosball player. Model is designed, printed & mailed in for contest entry. Must meet determined dimensions & mounting point.
Sounds like a cool idea!
BRILLIANT!!! This sounds fun! I’d like to make a team of heavy metal bands vs PoP singers!! After thinking about it, it wouldn’t be that hard to build the box and buy the poles. we could 3D print the handles at the end of the poles too! I guess the only thing to find would be the ball. But maybe he has all that info in the blog or on Thingiverse. I’m sure there are rules with the size and weight of the ball. But then again, I’m sure I’ll be breaking them by making a team of OZZYs with huge rectangles! So I guess it doesn’t matter if I have BIG BALLS! 😉 haha
Wouldn’t you need Bon Scott or Brian Johnson from AC/DC instead? haha
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gJ3tqIukBKg
A game I used to play more often when I was younger. Once I have my 3D printer this will be a great reason to start playing more often for sure.
I like this idea a lot, I used to play a lot with those things when i was a kid, the best part of print the players yourself it’s that you can make the game more dificult or asier depending of the size and shape of the players, you can do them with a very small feets, so you have to be more precise whn you play. I would them with movies characters, definitely Samuel Jackson as Jules Winnfield (Pulp Fiction) would be present.
Excellent idea! When I have a 3D printer, I will try to make one for my nephew.