Marcus Wu designed, 3D-printed, and assembled a 3x scale working Curta calculator. He shared his models and progress on Thingverse at <a href="https://www.thingiverse.com/thing:1943171" rel="nofollow">https://www.thingiverse.com/thing:1943171</a><p>His YouTube channel includes many videos of the development, assembly, and operation of his calculator. Watch a short demonstration at <a href="https://youtu.be/ShFkJgck6Pw" rel="nofollow">https://youtu.be/ShFkJgck6Pw</a><p>Adam Savage commissioned Marcus to build a copy. Adam unboxes his 3D-printed Curta on YouTube at <a href="https://youtu.be/j9uRckJLqLk" rel="nofollow">https://youtu.be/j9uRckJLqLk</a>
Well, this is a surprise! ReCurta had been in a bit of a holding period for a while; we did all the drawing translations and the conversions to Solidworks, but then hit a wall when it came to finding a way to actually make the thing.<p>Last month, I bought a lathe and mill and started teaching myself machining, with the goal of making it myself. It's going to take a long time, but it's pretty amazing making brand new Curta parts.
Per <a href="https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Curta" rel="nofollow">https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Curta</a> “The Curta is a small mechanical calculator”
The "original Curta Type I engineering diagrams" can be found here: <a href="http://www.vcalc.net/curta_1_engineering_drawings.zip" rel="nofollow">http://www.vcalc.net/curta_1_engineering_drawings.zip</a> (warning: large file)<p><i>Everything produced as part of this project is being released into the public domain. Everyone should be able to inspect, visualize, or even build their own Curta calculator; it shouldn't be fated to forever be an expensive relic on eBay.</i><p>Interesting. I wonder if the Chinese might take off with the plans and start making clones, the same way you can now find surprisingly good mechanical watches on AliExpress.
A nice video explaining how they work:<p><a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=loI1Kwed8Pk" rel="nofollow">https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=loI1Kwed8Pk</a>
Oh man, I've been wanting to buy my dad a curta for years (he started his career in electronics, repairing calculators in the 70s/80s). If something like this pans out might make it affordable.
Did you try and drag it into fictiv to see what they would qoute you for making it :)?<p><a href="https://www.fictiv.com/" rel="nofollow">https://www.fictiv.com/</a>