Strawblox
A new and open way to make shapes in the classroom and home
What are Strawblox?
Strawblox are simple, adaptable 3D-printable construction blocks, designed for use in classroom teaching and for creative freeplay. You can use the blocks to build structures, explore geometry, and to test out principles of maths and engineering, as well as for art and DT projects. Strawblox are suitable for use by children aged 4+.
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What do I need?
You’ll need access to a 3D printer, and a pack of standard size (5mm diameter) plastic drinking straws, such as the ones you’d buy in IKEA. Once you’ve printed the blocks from the 3D files we provide, you can connect them via different lengths of drinking straw to build bridges, prisms, arches, pyramids, and a huge variety of other structures. The apertures and angles in each block have been precision-designed to ensure your Strawblox structures are solid and sturdy, and they’re re-usable, so you can take your models apart and try different construction experiments.
What can I make?
Strawblox can be used to make mathematical shapes, models of molecules, stick people, engineering structures. We've been playing for a while as we prototype but we feel we're only scratching the surface and so it's time to make them open and available and see what you can make.
We invite users to share their new creations with us and we hope to inspire a community of Strawblox users and creators! Send your photos to , or tag photos with #strawblox on Instagram, Twitter or Facebook. We'll feature the best contributions on our blog. If you're a teacher using Strawblox in the classroom, please get in touch, we'll be working on a platform for you to share lesson plans very soon.
More examples
Why did we create Strawblox?
We created Strawblox as we saw that there was a need for affordable, adaptable construction blocks. Each block costs less than £0.30 to print, while the drinking straws cost as little as £0.55 for a pack of 200 straws.
Our overarching classroom mission is to create the BEST 3D-printable classroom resources with associated lesson plans, with the aim of supporting exciting, playful, hands-on learning across the curriculum. Strawblox are a key modular component of this.
Read about our design principles
Strawblox are Open
The design files for Strawblox are covered by a Creative Commons license, meaning that users can scale them up for larger construction projects, or even create completely new blocks and geometries of their own.
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