Making your own bubble machine is a really easy and fun project. It can be made from almost anything, glued and screwed together with an end result which will keep kids (and adults!) amused for hours.
With basic electronics of just a fan and a motor, a bubble machine is also a really easy first electronics project. This one I threw together with spare minutes here and there across the period of a week. The longest part was waiting for the centrifugal fan to arrive from Amazon, the best part was making a lot of mess in the Instructables office before realising that the shower would be a better place to blow bubbles while testing.
My bubble machine was made to keep my friends' toddler amused. She loves bubbles but is at an age where blowing them herself is rather hit or miss (not to mention messy). She spent a VERY happy 15 minutes running through and around them in the street outside, afterwhich the adults stepped in to play with heating the bubbles to see if they'd go higher, or experimenting with different bubble mixes to see if any where noticably better.
Earn 3 months pro membership: Anyone who makes their own bubble machine and posts a photo in the comments will get a code for 3 months of pro membership from me.
With basic electronics of just a fan and a motor, a bubble machine is also a really easy first electronics project. This one I threw together with spare minutes here and there across the period of a week. The longest part was waiting for the centrifugal fan to arrive from Amazon, the best part was making a lot of mess in the Instructables office before realising that the shower would be a better place to blow bubbles while testing.
My bubble machine was made to keep my friends' toddler amused. She loves bubbles but is at an age where blowing them herself is rather hit or miss (not to mention messy). She spent a VERY happy 15 minutes running through and around them in the street outside, afterwhich the adults stepped in to play with heating the bubbles to see if they'd go higher, or experimenting with different bubble mixes to see if any where noticably better.
Earn 3 months pro membership: Anyone who makes their own bubble machine and posts a photo in the comments will get a code for 3 months of pro membership from me.
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Signing UpStep 1: Tools & Materials
These are the tools and materials that I used for my bubble machine. Yours will differ greatly depending on what you have available. This is a great project to do with scraps, and odds and ends all hacked together. It doesn't have to look amazing to be a lot of fun, it just has to work.
To make it easier for others to reproduce this, I've done away with my normal format of exactly what to use and instead broken it down into the five main components the machine's made from. The 5 steps after this talk about what alternatives you could use and what each has to do to make a great bubble machine. I then give details on how to assemble it if you did it exactly like mine.
Trough: To hold the bubble solution. It needs to be waterproof and not too shallow, that's it.
Bubble Ring: A ring of holes that will spin slowly through the trough picking up the bubble solution. As it lifts out of the trough the holes pass before a blower to form the bubbles.
Motion: A slowly moving motor to spin the bubble ring. A continuous servo is perfect for this.
Blower: Something with a bit of puff. Will force the bubble liquid out of the holes in the ring, forming BUBBLES! I used this 12V centrifugal server fan from Amazon.
Power: A power source or two for the blower and spinner.
You'll also need nuts, bolts, hot glue or superglue to hold everything together.
The files I used for laser cutting are included in this step.
To make it easier for others to reproduce this, I've done away with my normal format of exactly what to use and instead broken it down into the five main components the machine's made from. The 5 steps after this talk about what alternatives you could use and what each has to do to make a great bubble machine. I then give details on how to assemble it if you did it exactly like mine.
Trough: To hold the bubble solution. It needs to be waterproof and not too shallow, that's it.
Bubble Ring: A ring of holes that will spin slowly through the trough picking up the bubble solution. As it lifts out of the trough the holes pass before a blower to form the bubbles.
Motion: A slowly moving motor to spin the bubble ring. A continuous servo is perfect for this.
Blower: Something with a bit of puff. Will force the bubble liquid out of the holes in the ring, forming BUBBLES! I used this 12V centrifugal server fan from Amazon.
Power: A power source or two for the blower and spinner.
You'll also need nuts, bolts, hot glue or superglue to hold everything together.
The files I used for laser cutting are included in this step.
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By the way, thanks for the following.
J
Anyone got any ideas how to cut out perfect circles sans a laser cutter?
http://www.sparkpeople.com/mypage_public_journal_individual.asp?blog_id=3673067
The guy made it just for this one day every year, and does it just to make people happy.
We love the bubble guy!
Loved it :-D
&
Thanks :-D
A centrifugal fan driven bya motor with a back spindle to which a gearbox was attached.
Laser cut disk much the same as yours, but I extended the crinkle cut edges with engraved slots to hold even more bubble mix.
At 6volts It eats through 3.4 of a pot of bubble mixture in 10 minutes....
Nom nom nom...
Took about (thinx) an hour to prep DXF files, half an hour cutting and assembling, and another hour for glue to set.
Alas it's back in the workshop right at this moment, getting another round of epoxy resin. Wee Lad was so exited he dragged it off the table and cracked the box off the mounting.
I've attached the DXF files here, they may not be a lot of use to anyone else alas, since they were made to fit the junk fan I had available.