在这个数字计算器便宜到近乎白送的时代，机械计算器虽然几乎带着点悲剧式的"不实用"，但连同那些庞大的机械计算机一起，依然是工程学的奇迹。它们只靠齿轮这类简单元件，用运动去完成从一次乘法到衣阿华级战列舰主炮射击诸元的各类计算。
正是这份着迷，再加上商用数字计算器价格高得离谱，促使创作者 3D all Workshop 花了两个月时间设计自己的机械计算器——而且全程用 FDM 3D 打印完成。
在视频中，他完整讲了设计过程、排错步骤，以及加法机构与乘法机构的工作原理。看上去似乎简单，本质上就是把旋转圈数换算成最终的指示位置，但进位、以及把乘法功能叠加到同一套机构上，都需要相当扎实的工程设计。
当然，用 FDM 打印来做齿轮这类对公差极敏感的东西，意味着大量时间在重新设计机构的各个部分——前后大约经历了一百次设计迭代才真正跑通，最后还靠了一点润滑帮忙。
这当然不是第一台 3D 打印机械计算器，更不用说那些木头做的版本。但看着一个东西从最基本的原理出发被亲手造出来，始终是一件相当酷的事。
本文来源：https://hackaday.com/2026-09-29/designing-a-fully-3d-printed-mechanical-calculator/
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In an era when digital calculators are so cheap they are almost free, mechanical calculators, though tinged with a kind of tragic "impracticality," remain engineering marvels, together with those massive mechanical computers. Relying only on simple components such as gears, they use motion to perform calculations ranging from a single multiplication to the fire-control data for the main guns of an Iowa-class battleship.
This fascination, together with the absurdly high price of commercial digital calculators, led the creator 3D all Workshop to spend two months designing his own mechanical calculator—with the entire process completed using FDM 3D printing.
In the video, he fully explains the design process, the debugging steps, and the working principles of the addition and multiplication mechanisms. It looks deceptively simple: it is essentially converting rotations into the final indicated position, but carrying, and adding multiplication functionality to the same mechanism, require quite solid engineering design.
Of course, using FDM printing to make something as tolerance-sensitive as gears means spending a lot of time redesigning parts of the mechanism—about a hundred design iterations were needed before it actually worked, and a bit of lubrication helped in the end.
This is certainly not the first 3D-printed mechanical calculator, let alone the versions made of wood. But watching something be made from first principles by hand is always pretty cool.