Plastic Prosthetics For Rubber Duckies

Will someone please think of the rubber duckies?!

For decades they’ve been reduced to a laughing stock: a caricature of waterfowl. Left without a leg to stand on, their only option is to float around in the tub. And they don’t even do that well, lacking the feet that Mother Nature gave them, they capsize when confronted with the slightest ripple. But no more!

Arise!

Due to the wonders of 3D printing, and painstaking design work by [Jan] from the Rubber Ducky Research Center, now you can print your own rubber ducky feet. We have the technology! Your ducks are no longer constrained to a life in the tub, but can roam free as nature intended. The video (embedded below) will certainly tug at your heartstrings.

OK, it’s a quick print and it made my son laugh.

The base and legs probably don’t fit your duck as-is, but it’s a simple matter to scale them up or down while slicing. (Picture me with calipers on the underside of a rubber ducky.) The legs were a tight press-fit into the body, so you might consider slimming them down a tiny bit when doing the scaling, but this probably depends on your printer tolerances.

It looks snazzy in gold-fleck PETG, and would probably work equally well for some more elaborate rubber duckies as well.

14 thoughts on “Plastic Prosthetics For Rubber Duckies

  1. This is important. Maybe the most important Hackaday post of 2020.

    Important for me, and that is all that truly matters. From my perspective anyway. I usually just skip any posts that even mention 3D printing. My aim is to not get sucked down that rabbit hole. But this is the first thing I have seen that really plants a strong urge in me to get into the game. This is something that really matters.

    I’ll have to locate some rubber duckies as well …. We are out of stock around here.

  2. I was walking down in barcelona city center last year. Came across this duck store. They make rubber duck of almost every movie character I like. I think they are gonna need a lot of legs. I think we need a similar call to action as 3d printing corona masks to fulfill that demand.

  3. OMG!!! I don’t know who you are…but I believe we must have been separated at birth.

    I did a project in school titled ‘Rubber Duckies, The Road From Freedom to Slavery’. It was a heartfelt piece about the plight of our most under appreciated exploited friends the Rubber Duckous Maximus. I was lucky enough to get to film them on their natural habitat, and protect sanctuary ‘egg lake’ on orcas island.

    Thank you for helping the little guys out.

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