Saturday, October 10, 2015

Kids Robot

I recently promised my daughter we would make a robot together, one that could make drawings.

After searching for some inspiration, I found a really simple one, here, that could be easily built and that she could understand.

So here are my plans, most steps, if not all, can be make by the children with some assistance:


Materials: a battery holder, motor, switch, tie wraps, and a piece of wood; some basic tools are also needed. I have pre-drilled the wood with 6 small holes for the feet, and 4 larger holes for the motor mount, and pre-soldered long wires to all electric components, so that the child can connect them.


Kids: Cut 3 lengths of solid core wire, strip it, and bend it to fit the holes, see next picture:


Kids: Mount like this!


Kids: Mount the motor with the tie wraps. Mount a thin flexible tube on the motor. Here I used a bit of thermo retractable sleeve. On the tip of that you mount a tip of a pencil.


Kids: Also the battery holder.


Connect it all via the switch. I used a push button, but a regular ON-OFF is also fine! even better maybe would be a ON-OFF-ON to reverse the direction!


Here it is a better view!


It then got decorated with antennae and mouth :) The kids really enjoyed it!!!

The idea is that the vibration both draws and makes the robot move. Mine was a bit too heavy to move, but I'll work on that!

I'm already thinking of the next ones! slightly more complex!