Spiral Art Maker (Spirograph-Style)

The pen returns to its starting point once the number of teeth rolled is a whole multiple of both gears — the least common multiple, lcm(ring, wheel). Dividing that by the ring’s teeth gives the trips around the ring, and dividing by the wheel’s teeth gives the number of points in the pattern. A 96-tooth ring with a 52-tooth wheel shares a factor of 4, so lcm is 1248: 13 trips and 24 points. Tooth counts with no common factor take the most trips.

Rolling the wheel inside a fixed ring traces a hypotrochoid, the classic looping flower with points facing outwards. Rolling it around the outside of a fixed center wheel traces an epitrochoid, which makes loops that bulge outwards. The same lcm rule decides when either one closes.

It sets how far the pen sits from the center of the rolling wheel, as a percentage of its radius. Holes near the rim give sharp points and deep loops; holes near the center give gentle, rounded waves. At 0% the pen just rides along with the wheel’s center and draws a plain circle.

No. Spirograph is a registered trademark of Hasbro, and this tool is not affiliated with, endorsed by or connected to Hasbro or the makers of the Spirograph toy. It is an independent drawing tool that uses the same well-known geometry — curves called hypotrochoids and epitrochoids — which people often describe as spirograph-style patterns.

Yes. The SVG contains one path per layer with the colors and line widths you chose, so it scales to any size without blurring and can be opened in Inkscape, Illustrator, Figma, Cricut Design Space or pen-plotter software. Very long patterns can contain many points; simplify the path in your editor if a machine struggles with it.

No. The curves are calculated and drawn by JavaScript on your device, and the PNG and SVG files are generated in your browser. Your layers live only in the open page and are gone when you close or reload it.