Infinity Stamp: 3D Printed Auto-inking Patterned Stamp Roller

Ready to make an impression on the world around you? Look no further than this infinity stamp. Perplex and delight others by laying a trail of raccoon pawprints across your next school essay or a duck’s webbed feet in your grandfather’s crawlspace. By connecting two paint rollers together we can easily create an auto-inking stamp roller that produces an almost endless design.

One roller is rolled in a paint tray to soak up paint and saturate the roller, the other roller is squished up against the first roller so the paint/ink can be applied to the stamp as it rolls over the working surface. Now your ready to roll!

Almost every part of this infinity stamp is purchasable off the shelf of any hardware store. You will just need access to a 3D printer from your local library or maker space to print the stamp pattern. Feel free to use one of our stamp designs or make your own.

Hardware Store Supplies

1. 2 x Paint Roller Frame
2. 1 x Paint Roller
3. 2 x Fender Washers
4. 2 x Washers
5. 1 x 1/4-20 1" Hex Bolt
6. 1 x 1/4 - 20 Wing Nut
7. (Optional) 1 x Small Spring Clamp

Self-Made

1. 1 x 3D Printed Cylindrical Stamp

For the infinity stamp to work, the two rollers must be in contact with each other. Just tight enough to reliably spread ink to the stamp, but not so tight that it will bind up while rolling on a surface. A simple and adjustable approach is to sandwich the two rollers with some fenders and a bolt in between the rollers. Since the handles of the roller frame were hollow and had a hole on the bottom, we found we could use a spring clamp to hold them temporarily while we twisted the wingnut tight. This helped keep the rollers in alignment until we achieved the desired contact relationship between the rollers.

Since the holes in the fender washers are quite large, the other washers are needed as an intermediate between them and the bolt/nut contact points. I suggest loosely assembling all the washers and nut in place before sliding the assembly between the rollers, if you have enough slack to do so. Then once the washers can clamp the rollers, you can tighten them as necessary.

Attached are two stamp files we've printed and used before. Both fit on the standard 3" paint rollers we have in the shop. The rollers came with two plastic "spoke wheels" that the paint sponge would normally slide over. The internal diameter of our cylindrical stamps were designed to slide over the same part.

We printed the stamp in both PETG and TPU and didn't see a significant difference in stamp quality. TPU suffered a little bit with messy overhangs during the printing process, but its flexibility theoretically might allow it to be inked and ink better with imperfectly flat surfaces.

Things to note

If you use the stamp right off of the printer, you may be able to see layer lines in the print. Sanding the stamp surface with some 120 grit sand paper, removed those lines easily and cleanly.

The stamp will "drop" in between the embossed stamp heights, if there isn't a design continuously being laid on the paper during the rotation of the stamp. This will lead to erroneously markings. We got around this problem by having a track on both edges of the stamp that keep the stamp at a constant height in relation to the paper. Just make sure the tracks are wider that the inking roller, otherwise you will have two lines printed alongside your design the entire way.

We wanted to make an infinite stamp that just about everyone could use. We began this project as we do so many other, by breaking out the calipers and making precise measurements of some paint rollers. If we modeled out the different tapers on the handles, we thought we could make a good holder for them. But using a bespoke solution for those rollers made it less transferable to other brands and sizes of paint rollers and honestly made more work for us. So instead we tried a more universal approach of just clamping the two rollers together. Try out these stamps and share your own ideas to improve this design. Check back later to see the bigger designs we will try with this concept.

This design is licensed under a cc-by-sa 4.0 creative commons license. Tag Make Studio JUMP as an author if you modify and reshare.

Enjoy, and keep rolling!

Jack's Urban Meeting Place

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