Vibrating Motors

A vibrating motor is essentially a motor that is improperly balanced. In other words, there is an off-centered weight attached to the motor's rotational shaft that causes the motor to wobble. The amount of wobble can be changed by the amount of weight that you attach, the weight's distance from the shaft, and the speed at which the motor spins.

This type of motor can be used affixed to all kinds of objects, which will cause them to vibrate and move freely about. This is a quick and dirty way to get a Simple Bot to move about, but not exactly the most elegant.

Vibrating motors can be found inside cell phones, pagers, gaming controllers, and personal massagers.

In absence of those, you can easily build your own vibrating motor by attaching any off centered weight to any motor shaft. They can also be created by breaking in half balanced components already attached to motor shafts.

Follows are some simple examples.

Step 1: Find One

A great source for vibrating motors is inside gaming controllers with "rumble" or "vibration" feedback.

Simply take apart the gaming controller and free the motors. They should be ready to use.

(Note that some of the links on this page are affiliate links. This does not change the cost of the item for you. I reinvest whatever proceeds I receive into making new projects. If you would like any suggestions for alternative suppliers, please let me know.)

Step 2: Unbalanced Fan

A quick and dirty way to make a vibrating motor without any extra parts is to take a computer fan and snap off half of the fan blades with a pair of pliers. This will make the fan off-balanced and vibrate.

Step 3: Add Eraser

Another simple way to make a vibrating motor is to stick a pencil eraser (or cork) onto the shaft of any standard DC motor.

Step 4: Terminal Strips

If you would like to get fancier about making a vibrating motor, you can clamp a terminal strip to the shaft of a DC motor. The terminal strip itself will be enough to make the motor vibrate. However, to experiment with adding more off-centered weight to your setup, you can clamp small items like bolts into the terminals on the strip.

Step 5: Add Alligator Clip

If you want to get fancy about doing this, you can add an alligator clip.

Find a motor with a plastic nylon gear. Clamp an alligator clip onto this gear. Finally, solder the alligator clip's halves together. This will both melt the alligator clip into the gear and fuse the two halves to prevent it from opening again.

This is now a vibrating motor with a firmly attached off-center weight.

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Comments

[NickL15]

One idea I have thought heavily about and how to design it is a vibrate motor where you can electrically set both the frequency (speed of motor) and also amplitude (vibrational weight/offset) somehow. A low frequency, how power speaker sent a signal is one way, but i keep thinking there would be a motorized way of somehow adjusting the weight/offset mechanically using some trick/gearing/magnet that I have not yet figured out. Keen if anyone else can\has!

[refuh-Q-L8r]

I know it’s been years but did you ever find a solution. I’m in the same hunt, essentially.

[DaveB154]

I am new to Instructables and was hoping for some help. I have been reading through many posts and projects to find what I need, but still need help. I am trying to build a vibrating remote controlled collar to signal to my deaf dog. I would like something very compact that has a small vibrating motor in it that also works at a small distance, not more than 50 yards or so. I only need one setting, two would be great if possible. I just want a small transmitter, (size of a garage door opener) with a single or two buttons to produce a small vibration, and maybe a more intense vibration, to get the dogs attention when he is not looking at me. From there, he is trained to visual hand signals. Any help on how to build this, and build it as LEAST bulky as possible? I have seen a few instructables I am trying to piece together, but I am not an electronics person, have done a few projects like building an egg incubator...So far I know I need a transmitter and a reciever, a power source, which I was hoping could be smaller than a 9volt battery, and a small vibrating motor, possibly the minidisc or bullet type that runs of 3V? Not sure if that would even be strong enough, but my dog is pretty sensitve. I am not opposed to spending a little money, as the dog collars on the market are either cheap garbage for around $20 or good quality but have way more unnecessary features than I need and cost a whopping $200. Thank you very much!

[randofo]

I responded on your forum topic about this.
https://www.instructables.com/community/B9ZPXA6K1LWZRB0/

[amk9629]

Hi! I was browsing the internet and am looking to make something very similar to DaveB154. I clicked on the link for the answer to the forum but couldn't find the forum?

[TeDv8]

it is or can be quite simple, we did something like this something like 5 or 6 years ago(I and some other people), but then not for dogs but to help blind people navigate more easily, in our case it had some more complicated sensors for measuring the environment and such, but we also had a simple WIFI function in it which would connect to road crosspoints so they could know where they where and other things, think about stuf like traffic light colours. we used a simple esp 8266 for the bracelets and also for those crossections, range was more than far enough.

but in your case you can do it much more simple.
. get or make a vibration motor inside of a enclosure so it won't be blocked. you can get more than powerfull enough ones for less than €2. and if your dog is well trained you can even use many of the weaker ones, or using a vibration resonating horn(to efficiently move the vibration to the dog).

then either use something like a esp8266 or 2(remote and receiver).
or use another microprocessor with a simple cheap radio module, those have far greater range than wifi often when used right and not using special complicated methods to increase wifi range.

Or even more easy, get a cheap 2 channer or one channel rc module just a simple cheap one, you can get them for around €1,60 and they do everything for you just connect the motor and a battery to it, and then on distance press the button and it will work. they are often also made to not suffer from the inductive back spikes and such so typically you don't need to add a diode(in reverse direction) and capacitor to your motor to ensure it keeps working well, actually with such modules you shouldn't add a diode at all, and often no capacitor either so it is just plug and play. and that is all you need since often their range is around 50 meters. you can also modify a old broken rc toy.
but you could make the colar without any programming or electronics knowledge by just getting one such 1 or 2 channel rc module for around or less than €2 typically. then connect a vibration motor to it, a powerfull enough one that the dog notices it enough, you could also make one using something like epoxy or solder around the engine shaft, especially if the shaft has a gear on it, and make it extend in one way, put it in some kind of cylinder to enclose it. then connect batteries to the receiver in the colar and to the remote and you are done.

if you have some programming and/or electronics knowledge you can easily make it much more refined and compact and nice to use and give it other features or such. and cheaper as well in some cases even for further range. since you just need to turn on and off one motor which means you can use super simplistic things. for example I made a 10 channel simple digital rc system for around €0,30 including the remote, excluding the batteries. it is also very small. but you could do much simpler things, and also avoid many of the problems that 10 channel thing had, that one while working has some problems I need to fix, even though those problems(range and stability have to do with me using a way to high radio frequency, just keep it at 5,8ghz or lower up to a few mhz minimum(lower will likely give you legal problems). you could also try to just get a simple 4**mhz or 3**mhz(where * is a random number) transmitter and receiver module and try to use those directly with a button. some of them are made so that they actually work like a virtual wire. meaning you could just connect a button to it and if you press it the receiver will output the same signal. if you have one of those then you can just connect a transistor or mosfet to it and connect your battery and motor to it, add a reversed diode and capacitor paralel to the motor and you are done as well.
even though if you do that you could as well add a microcontroller or some other parts to make it more relyable so noice won't affect it, for example a simple thing to do if you don't want a microcontroller is to just add some simple small cirquit that takes the output and turns it into a average number by making it a analog voltage(think of a resistor and a capacitor or such). then add something like a voltage triggered switch that triggers from a speciffic voltage so that it will trigger if you press the button but not if some noise comes across. you could use a 555 timer for that as well, if you don't have more specialized parts and don't want to make to much yourself. a 555 timer and a resistor and capacitor will work fine probably, optimally you would add some extra things but I won't talk about such now. but doing so just gives you the average state of the output over the last moments(depends on capacitor and resistor size) essentially you get a analog value representation of all those values averaged into one, something like the 555 checks if it is enough to trigger the motor or if it is just noise. that said, this only works well if you are the only one using it, but it results in a much smaller and cheaper alternative to one of those €1,60 rc modules. if you want stability look more into things like a esp 8266 with wifi or such, or look into mocules combined with a microprocessor, or look into a actual proper rc system. you can get quite okay rc systems for around €16 to €20. they are small and effective. but you might need a brushed esc for the motor.

[JustinD163]

How do I get the motor started

[randofo]

With a battery or battery pack.

You can learn more about motors here:
https://www.instructables.com/lesson/Motors-and-Mo...

You can see how I attach a battery pack to a vibrating motor here:
https://www.instructables.com/id/Simple-Bots-Rolly...

[HauntedN]

i want to know if a controller that doesn't have vibration motors can have them added to it?

[the minecrafth]

not with out spending the money the controller cost to replace the board and make it all compatible

[Shaggy74]

Hi, I am looking at designing a piece of equipment that will reduce the vibration in a small scale RC Helicopter. For this I am looking to measure the phase of the helicopter and the dc motor I will be using as the shaker. To then ensure the motor is 180 degrees out of phase with the helicopter. The question I have is how will I design a circuit to utilise an optical sensor to collect phase information of the helicopter and then the dc motor? Thank you in advance for your input

[randofo]

This question has little to do with this project. My best guess is you will need an optical rotary encoder wheel attached to both of the motors to try to synchronize them.

[Shaggy74]

My apoligies randofo. I was lookung toward using a shaker for my project hence why i posted this question. Thank you for your reply

[alisonc]

Great instructable! Thank you. I do have a question - what is the object on the shaft of the dc motor all the way on the right?

[randofo]

That is a commercial vibrating motor with a weight on it. You can get motors like that from aliexpress.com or dx.com.

[EtheralDreamer]

The added benefit here being that you can easily "tune" in the desired vibrational character.

[EtheralDreamer]

I'd be careful to only cut off a small amount at a time and give it a little test. You can always cut more you can't add fin weight back on (although now I'm picturing a spot of JB weld on just the fan hub LOL). It should also be noted this will wreak havoc on the life of the bearings in the fan as they are made to be evenly loaded. Great concept :-)

[whisp3r3r]

i absolutely love this article... clean and simple. thanks, and keep it up! it was a great help

[ilpug]

I made a few for vibrobots using a dime with a hole drilled in it Sugru'd to the motor spindle. Works great and never breaks.

[Antzy Carmasaic]

I use buttons. I push the motor shaft through a button hole and put some glue if required to hold it in place.