Circuitry: Scribble Bot

hi and welcome back in this activity

we'll be making a scribble bot so

scribble bot is similar to

the bristlebot we had made earlier very

similar concept

the same type of circuit

and we'll be actually creating our motor

to have a little bit of instability to

it to cause that

um vibration like we saw in the scribble

bot and then or sorry the

bristlebot and then instead of the

bristles

we'll have markers at the end and those

will

essentially write on your paper

Materials

so for your scribble bot you'll need a

piece of paper a large piece of paper

which i have

right here um you'll need a paper cup

two wires some tape

three markers popsicle stick

double a battery and a dc motor and this

one

comes with the stand you can use it if

you want although it's not necessary

but this stand can offer you a little

bit of height if

you want in your design

Design

to start you'll need your paper cup and

your three markers

as well as your tape and what you'll do

is you'll take a piece of tape

and tape them all along the inside here

and make sure they're all of equal

distance

they don't necessarily have to be

perfect but just enough to keep

some stability so i'll show you what

that looks like once i have them

all taped in this is how my scribble bot

looks so far as you can see i have some

tape right here

and all three of these are about

equidistant

and if you place it down you'll want to

make sure i know you can't really see

this that well in the camera

but you just want to make sure that it's

stable and it it sticks upright

Wiring

then you'll want to take your motor and

your two wires and connect the wires

to the little terminals here at the end

and as you can see there are these two

little

metal parts right here that have

a loop and what you'll do is you'll take

one end here

and loop it through

and then you'll want to bend it back on

itself here the wire

so that way it maintains its connection

and it doesn't fall off when the bristle

bot

is shaking and you'll do this to the

other side as well

and this is what you'll have so you'll

have these two

here be careful not to bend these too

often these terminals

because the metal here is very thin and

so it can become brittle and break off

and you don't want that to happen

because then it's very hard

to use the motor next you'll take your

motor

and your cup and you'll want to make

sure your cup is upside down so like

this is how you would typically use a

cup

have it upside down here and you'll want

to tape the

motor to the side of the cup and one

thing to make sure

is that the part that sticks out of the

motor here

you want to make sure it's hanging a

fair amount off of the

cup because what we'll do is we'll take

our popsicle stick and we'll place it

on here right and when it's spinning you

want to make sure the cup doesn't stop

it if it's too close then it won't be

able to spin

but if it has enough clearance then it

should spin and do the job

so what you'll do is you'll tape it in

and no worries you can always untape

things

replace things um reposition them

so it's no big deal this is just to kind

of get us our starting point

this is what this will look like you'll

want to make sure

so i kind of have my tape overlap but i

can always

rip a little bit of this tape off so

that way it's not

hanging off too much here and it won't

get in the way of the popsicle stick

and then after this step you'll want to

find a place

for your battery to be just it can be

anywhere on here as long as the wires

reach so

if you have long enough wires and you

want to place it underneath the cup you

might be able to do that

otherwise you can place it anywhere on

top or the side

and so you'll just tape down your

battery

Testing

so now you can test your battery and

your motor make sure it works

um what you'll do is you'll take

one wire and you'll place it to the

positive end

and then another wire to the negative

end

and this may take a little bit of

moving around or you might need an extra

pair of hands if you can

but you'll place them both on these ends

and you'll listen to here

for the motor

so the motor and the battery are working

just great um

and your next step will be to

take your popsicle stick and tape it on

to

the stick part of the motor and what

you'll want to make sure is that your

popsicle stick is not on center so this

is important part

you don't want your popsicle stick to be

right in the center

because then your scribble bot won't

move as much if it's very

balanced it might just spin like a

propeller

but if it's a little off-center it'll

make it wobbly and that's what can cause

your scroll bot to move around more and

make different designs

so you'll want to make sure that it's

not on center

and then once you have it taped on

you'll want to flip it around a few

times

and just make sure that it's not hitting

the cup i'll come

back after i have this tape down to show

you what that looks like

now that i have my popsicle stick taped

up to my motor

i'm just going to rotate it a few times

and make sure it's not hitting any part

of the cup or anything else

we want to make sure that there's the

least amount of resistance

which means that the

motor will be able to work at full

capacity

so after this step you'll want to start

to

tape down um the wires on either end

of the battery and so to do this you

will

just take a little piece of tape

Adding Wire

and make sure your wire is really on

there and that your tape is

is completely stuck down because if you

have tape that's not

keeping the wire completely down then

your bristle bot might

in a sense turn off because the circuit

is then open and uncomplete incomplete

so here i am just pressing down on the

wire making sure that it has full

contact

with that negative side and then

we'll take this wire and

place it on this positive end but first

we can

again test it out and see what it looks

like so

as you can see my motor is spinning and

the popsicle stick

it might be hitting a little bit but

that's okay

um it's doing enough spinning for

it to be okay with me so your next step

will be taping this part down

and then you can remove the caps and

place it on your paper and see what

happens

all right so now i have everything taped

down i took the caps off the motor is

running

i'm going to place it on my paper so

let's see what kind of design it makes

got stuck on the end i had to make shift

a large piece of paper so i take down

four pieces of paper so i kind of got

stuck here but that's okay

here i'll put it down on one square

so

okay and if you want it to stop just

take off one of the pieces of tape

like you would with the scribble bot um

and then make sure that you put your

caps back on so they don't dry out and

it doesn't get ink

anywhere you don't want it to be

and you can always explore a little bit

more

you can change the position of the

popsicle stick

you can also change where your motor is

you can

if you have any other objects that are

similar to this you can put those on

i've seen

um some bristle busts before that have

like a cork at the end that's off center

and you can if you have more markers you

can add more markers you can change the

positioning and the markers

there's so many different things you can

do to get different design

on your scribble bot so i would really

encourage you all to

try it out and see what kinds of

patterns you get and

explore what happens when you actually

switch

these two wires so

instead of having the one on this end

attached to the positive end and the one

on this end attached to the negative end

what if you flip those what happens what

happens to the propeller

so try it out and see what you get