Clip-on Stormtrooper Heads 3D Printed to Upgrade Foosball Table

It may well have been patented as far back as the 1890s, but the game of Table Football – or Foosball – is thought to have been invented by one Harold Searles Thornton in 1922. The game came together in the designer’s mind shortly after he had attended a Tottenham Hotspur FC football match, a club which he supported. Upon returning home, he set to work trying to replicate a home version of football, and he’s said to have used a box of matches for the original iteration of the game. An uncle of his, Louis P. Thornton, brought the game to the US and ultimately, to the United States Patent Office.

The game now sports a governing body, the International Table Soccer Federation in France, and it’s a favorite of hipster office workers the world over.

Youmagine designer “excite” is a firmware engineer but was primarily educated as a mechanical engineering. The designer says he “particularly [likes] to work on projects that involve electronics, firmware, and mechanical hardware.”

Stepping outside that envelope for a minute, the designer came up with a bit of Star Wars-related diversionary 3D printed goodness.

The Imperial Stormtrooper, a fictional soldier from the Star Wars films by producer and director George Lucas, have also become a nerd staple as well as serving as the main ground-force of the Galactic Empire under the command of Darth Vader. The design for the Stormtroopers has been appropriated for an incredibly wide range of uses and this is yet another one of those applications.

“I decided to enhance our Foosball table with a ‘Star Wars’ theme,” excite says. “Originally, I was going to print the entire Foosball ‘player,’ but there was some concern about the 3D printed players breaking. In the end, I just printed a head that snaps onto the head of the Foosball player.”

The designer says it should be noted that as the 3D printed Stormtrooper heads are larger than the normal head of the Foosball player, the balance of the players is changed somewhat. According to “excite,” very serious Foosball players might find the modification unacceptable.

The Stormtrooper attachments were designed for a Sportcraft Foosball table, a smaller version of the game.

An OpenSCAD file is available, so that shouldn’t be a problem if modifications are required, and an .STL file is included as well. The head of the Stormtrooper player is basically a rounded square 24 mm wide and 10.8 mm tall, and it’s topped off by a “helmet” formed from a truncated sphere 11.4 mm tall and 29 mm in diameter at its widest.

It should also be noted that the designer borrowed the Stormtrooper head from a project by Christopher Zuk on Thingiverse.

According to “excite,” permanent markers were used to color in and detail various features of the Stormtrooper players.

You can find the files you’ll need to upgrade your own Foosball table here on Youmagine…

Will you print out these Stormtrooper helmets and upgrade your Foosball table? Let us know in the Stormtrooper Foosball Players forum thread on 3DPB.com.