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make in progress 2026

Fisher Price Record Player Plates

Converting music into 3D-printable discs for a 1970s Fisher Price toy record player — encoding a melody into printed geometry the toy can actually play.

The idea

The Fisher Price "Music Box Record Player" doesn't read grooves. Each of its plastic discs is a ring of little bumps that pluck a comb of metal tines as the disc turns — a music box wearing a record's clothes. Which means a disc is really just data: bump present or absent, at a known angle, for a known tine. And data I can generate.

The goal: take a melody, work out which tine plays which note at which moment, and place a bump for every note. Print the disc. Drop it on the toy. Hear a song that never existed as a plastic part until I made it.

Where it's at

This one is live on the bench right now, so this page grows as it does. Current status:

  1. Mechanism mapped — tine spacing, disc geometry and the bump-to-note relationship measured off an original disc.
  2. Note → geometry code — a script that turns a simple melody into bump coordinates and writes a printable model. In progress.
  3. Test prints — dialling in bump height and tolerance so the tines actually catch. Next up.
A 3D-printed Fisher Price record player disc on the toy
First printed test disc. Photos and a short clip of it playing will land here as the prints improve.
// work in progress — documented as it happens tell me what to play →