Powered by a simple homopolar motor and an LR44 button battery, these charming STEAMjunk automata spin and twirl, creating a delightful animated tabletop decoration.
Print the parts sheet onto thin card, shape the wire using the templates provided, and build your own spinning bugs.
The project comes with three designs to start you off: a spider, a bee and a ladybird (or ladybug if you’re reading this in the US). From there, you can use the simple mechanism as the basis for your own spinning creations.
My original plan was to turn the idea into a whole series of Halloween-themed spinners featuring a spider, skeleton, ghost and other spooky characters. As so often happens, though, other projects got in the way and by the time I returned to the idea Halloween had come and gone.
You can, of course, take the basic mechanism and use it to create your own spinning characters. Perhaps an autumn-themed set decorated with beautifully coloured leaves swirling in the breeze?
The project comes as a downloadable pdf with all the card parts and step-by-step instructions and templates for you to follow.
The homopolar motor is one of the simplest forms of electric motor. The battery and two strong magnets form a stack that holds itself together entirely through magnetic attraction.
For the rotor, you’ll need a non-ferrous (non-magnetic) wire. I used a length of single-core hook-up wire with the plastic insulation removed.
To remove the insulation, you should probably use a proper wire stripper. Failing that, make sure there’s nobody around to tell you off if you resort to using your teeth. :-)
As mentioned earlier, the motor is super-simple. Electricity flows from the top of the battery, down the two arms of the wire to the sides of the magnet. The current in the wire arms interacts with the magnet’s field creating a force that turns the wire frame.
Here’s the result.
Over the years I’ve made a few other homopolar projects that you might be interested to try out. Click on the images to find out more.
Thanks for reading, and I hope these little spinning bugs bring a bit of whirring, twirling fun to your tabletop. Don’t forget to subscribe if you’d like more projects, mechanisms and making adventures delivered straight to your inbox. Have a great week, keep creating, and I’ll see you again soon with another project.