About this video
This hands-on build shows how to make a small vibrating paper clip robot ('bot') from a bent paper clip, two vibration motors, and a battery holder. The steps are shaping the clip into a symmetric frame, gluing it to the battery holder, attaching the motors with hot glue, and bending the motor ends into feet so the bot sits on a slight slope.
You'll be able to
- shape a paper clip into a symmetric frame for a small robot.
- explain why hot glue cools faster on metal than on plastic.
- explain how motor placement and foot shape affect how the bot sits and moves.
Key words
- Insulator
- A material that does not conduct heat or electricity well, such as plastic here.
- Heat sink
- A metal object that draws heat away from something, so glue on it cools and sets faster.
- Symmetrical
- Having matching halves, which keeps the frame balanced so the bot moves evenly.
- Perpendicular
- Meeting at a right angle, used here for how the motor sits against the battery holder.
- Contacts
- The exposed copper parts on the motor that connect it to the electrical circuit.
Transcript
So we're going to take our paper clip, and I'm going to bend it out like this. Actually it's OK if it's curved still like that on the end like that. And we only need it to be about that long on the ends. So we'll cut off the excess like that. And we want to-- we're going to bend it so that it goes like this.
So that it goes-- actually we want it to go about like that. And then we're going to straighten it out, like this. Like that. And then in order for the motors to fit on it, we're going to bend it down like this on one side. You kind of want to make sure it's nice and symmetrical like that.
OK, so let's get these two wires out of our way. And in order to get this to work just right, maybe put a little bit more of a bend in that. OK. We'll put some hot glue right there in the middle. Now it's going to take a while for this hot glue to cool. There's a fair amount of glue there.
And it's sitting on top of plastic which is an insulator. So it's not going to cool very fast. But you'll know that the hot glue is cool once it turns a milky color. But it's important to keep everything steady while the hot glue is cooling. Otherwise, it won't hold as well.
If you balance it right, it should be OK. Once the hot glue is cooled, you can go ahead and attach your motors. So you want to make sure you attach the motors with the contacts, the copper contacts, facing up. And the motors are going to sit on the paper clip like this.
And so it's important that you get the motor kind of perpendicular to the battery holder. And we want to make sure that that paper clip is in good contact with the back of the motor there, because that's what's going to hold the motor in place. It's easy for these things to move around.
So make sure you put hot glue on both sides of the paper clip. And the good thing about the hot glue in this situation is that it will dry a lot quicker than the hot glue when it was on top of the battery holder, because that metal will act as a heat sink, the metal of the motor.
And you want to do the same exact thing for the other side. Once the glue is dry on the motors, you can bend them down so that they become the feet of the little bot-- like that. So they should bend down far enough so that the bot is at a bit of a slope this way.
So this end is a little higher than this end. And they should be about equal across from each other.
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