Scribble Bots

At Maker Faire Rebecca and Anya waited in the hot sun for quite a while to get into the Exploratorium booth to make Scribbling Machines, and our other friends wanted to do it too, so we set it up as a Friday Art project.

I’m pretty sure the idea is almost as old as DC motors, and if you search around a bit you can find many examples, also called things like ‘Art Bot’, or ‘Draw Bot’. Here are some good write ups from Teacher Tom, Kiwi Crate and Geek Dad

Our version used either a “super efficient propeller motor” or “super efficient solar motor” from Electronics Goldmine (I think they must have been on sale when we bought them as they were only half as expensive) connected to a AA battery with electrical tape and a rubber band. Next time I will get battery holders and alligator clips, because holding the motor wires onto the battery using electrical tape and rubber bands turned out to be frustrating for the kids. And some of the adults.

But we had fun! The motion is created by attaching an eccentric weight to the motor, which causes the whole thing to vibrate around. These little robots are great for kids to experiment with, because there is no right way to attach the off center weight or put the legs on, and whenever you change things a little bit, it works differently. Great for tinkering!

When I was setting up the links for this post I found this other post on GeekDad, 5 Real Robots Made From Everyday Stuff which has some awesome robotics projects! I love robots.