Scribbling Machine!

For my 287 Maker Faire project I made a scribbling machine. The instructions, which can be found on a number of websites, first came from The Tinkering Studio at the Exploratorium. I used the one on Make it @ Your Library. Prior to this, I had never seen or touched a motor, and, admittedly, I didn't know how they worked. I read an article on motors from Make it @ Your Library, but the mechanism remained murky to me. After I had the motor in front of me and touched the wires to the battery and saw the axle being to spin, I began to understand. This situation reminded me of the discrepancy that exists in schools between learning about engineering and actually engineering, as discussed in chapter 2 of Invent to Learn. Reading the article on motors was akin to hearing a lesson in school by a teacher. Information was received, but it was hardly real until I encountered the motor.

The instructions provided a picture of a motor and suggested finding one in an old toy. I found this bubble machine and detected the motor. I took out the motor and experimented with touching the wires to a battery, which caused the axle to spin. My father helped me solder more wire onto the existing wires to make them longer. He also suggested that I solder a wire between the two batteries that I was going to use because it was difficult to keep them together. I wouldn't have known a) how to solder and b) that I should solder if my dad hadn't been there and provided guidance. This seemed like a skill that would  be hard to pick up from reading as it addressed a problem that I was actually facing.

The toy I took apart for the motor. The motor is the silver cylinder.

The instructions for the scribbling machine are hardly prescriptive. In fact, it serves more as a prompt than as instructions. The prompt: make a machine with a motor and markers, and see how you can change the marks made. Essentially, the maker is told to attach the motor to a frame and offset the motor with varying weights to cause the frame to move in different ways. How the maker does all this is up to them. If there is no weight on the motor or if the weight is centered the frame will just move slightly in place. The weights cause the motor to bounce and move about in circles. I used four different weights made out of linoleum sheets used for linocut printmaking. 

Weights used to vary the movement of the machine

The machine! I used a plastic cup for the frame and rubber bands to hold the motor and batteries on. In this photo you can also see where the weight goes on the axle.

The most tinkering for this project came from adding the weights to the axle. I learned that if the weight is heavier, the machine will move slowly and bounce less, causing the markers to create a solid line. If the weight is lighter and bounces more, the machine moves quicker and causes the marker to lift from the paper. The regular markers with the pointed tips left dots when using a lighter weight. I also used markers with a paint brush tip, which left waves when using the same weight. 

The marks made also varied based on the tip of the markers used

Results:

This project was truly what Seymour Papert would call "hard fun" in his "Eight Big Ideas Behind the Constructionist Learning Lab." Getting the motor to work while attached to the cup was difficult, and the process required I learn more about the relationship between the motor, its wires, and the batteries that power it. The given age for this project is 0-10 and 11-18. I would add that this project is perfectly difficult for a 25-year-old like myself who has no experience with motors. Experimenting with the weights and figuring out the behavior that would result wasn't as difficult, but took a lot of time and observation. Seeing the results on paper was absolutely fun. As someone with a more artistic bent than an engineering one, the results felt like the reward.

I found which brush stroke I preferred (the third weight with the paintbrush tip marker), and planned out a scribble based on the behavior I expected from the machine. I put one marker on at a time, and the following picture is the result:

My prized scribble

As it says in Invent to Learn, you never want to hear someone say they are done with a project, because each experience should spur new ideas. I plan to try this next with acrylic paint and watercolors.