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A solar powered train built on a cheese box
lid.
Thanks to Heather Daddio for the box. (I don't like this kind of
cheese. A real man eats TIGER cheese!) |
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| Mouse-over for
controls. |
Details:
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Here is the first version of the box. Inside was a "pulley" made of
foam poster board with a tiny neodymium magnet.
The "belt" was a rubber band. The axel was a bamboo skewer. It
worked fairly well. |
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The second version
has a motor with a gear box. A piece of metal was epoxied to a radio
knob and the knob was attached to the motor
shaft. The magnet sits at the end of the metal arm. The motor turns
at 3 RPM. The metal piece has two arms for experimental purposes. |
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The original idea was to have a little car drive
around the outside of the lid, with a house in the middle. Because
the gearbox was too large
to center in the box, the road had to be moved. Then we found a
little train at the Arts and Crafts store, so the road turned into
train tracks.
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The train engine is a little under an
inch long. It doesn't have real wheels, so it just drags around the
top of the cheese box.
The Laughing Cow Station was made of bits of balsa wood and is 1 and 1/8
inches long. |
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The sound comes from a 30 year old sound
generator chip I found in my parts box (SN94281). |
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The parts were mounted on a piece of card
stock and attached to the box with hot glue. The little speaker
came from a greeting card.
A diode protects the chip in case the solar cells
are hooked up backwards, and it's in a socket so it can be popped out and
used elsewhere. |
I was going to add bushes, a tree,
details to the train station, etc but I didn't want to make
it look too "real". It's a cheese box!
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| This concludes today's
broadcast. |
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