Fidget Cubes

Welcome to my tutorial on fidget cubes. Hopefully my guide is detailed enough to give you a good insight into how to effectively build your own fidget cube at home. ATTENTION: this is not a fidget spinner. Feel free to scroll through my steps and look at the pictures down below.

Step 1: Gather All Work Material

This depends on what size of cube you would like to create, furthermore you should own some machines for this project. A bench drill, hand held drill, and belt sander should be some requirements to create a quality fidget cube. Here are some pictures of my used machines.

ATTENTION: Wear eye protection when using the machines. (guidance)

Step 2: Button One

choose a wood you would like to use and start to smoothen the surface.

Tip: When putting the cube into the bench vice use wool between it and the metal to avoid damage to the wood.

Next:

You take a pen/pencil of choice and mark the center on one side of the cube. Do this by drawing 2 lines from edge A to B and C to D. Now you have a point of intersection. Drill a hole with the bench drill. (Size of your buttons circumference) at the point of intersection.

Step 3: Enlarge Hole

In my case the drill was not large enough to drill out the size of the button. I had to use a chisel to hammer out further wood pieces. I then polished it with sandpaper. Then I grabbed a smaller chisel and scratched out all wood shavings.

Step 4: Apply Hot Glue

After I was sure the hole was big enough and all shavings were removed I filled the hole with hot glue to about 1/4. I rapidly pressed in the button (hot glue dries fast) and firmly pressed it into the correct position.

ATTENTION: Don't use too much glue else it will not fit or the glue will come out the top and dry - this messes up the wood and is difficult to remove.

ATTENTION: Make sure to cut of any parts on the button which are not necessary for its function. I for example removed the positive and negative metal wires.

Step 5: New Button

Pick a different side and mark (same as before) a point of intersection, furthermore drill the hole of your button's size. Due to my button being thinner, i do not need to chisel anymore wood away.

Step 6: Glue Button #2

Same as the button before, add hot glue into the hole after removing the chisel rests. Place the button into the hole and press firmly onto the button.

ATTENTION: Do not use too much glue.

ATTENTION: Due to this being a press button try to avoid, at all costs, that the glue gets in contact with the surface of the press button, because else it will break the button due to it glueing the movable part to the stationary part.

Step 7: Further Button or Wheel

If you would like to have more than two buttons on the cube you could also include a wheel (ball bearing) or a further button. Due to time issues and a problem with the space on my cube (the buttons were touching on the interior - making further button placement impossible) I was not able to add more, but you sure can! At your local store you can find low cost ball bearings or switches you could include on your own cube.

Lastly....

You can spray paint the cube, try to tape of all moving parts before spray painting, because else the buttons would not work.

There are many more possibilities.

Thanks for reading my instructable.