Fidget-Spinning Robot Out-Uselesses Other Useless Machines

When the [Director of Legal Evil] at Louisville’s LVL1 Hackerspace decided to demonstrate the uselessness of a 3D printer by printing a fidget spinner, another member at the space’s Tuesday meeting rose to the challenge and built a machine that whose sole purpose is to spin fidget spinners.

[Gary Flispart] used an Arduino clone and what appears to be a motor driver in conjunction with a stepper motor. The motor moves a belt that turns a series of metal scraps serving as a four-bar linkage. The linkage moves the dowel that turns the spinner and then gets out of the way so it doesn’t inhibit the toy’s rotation. The Digital Fidget Digit, as [Gary] calls it, looks like it was built out of scrap metal and random pieces of wood in the glorious tradition of hackerspace projects.

We at Hackaday love crazy projects that come out of hackerspaces, like the iris porthole at i3Detroit, another space’s ultimate fume extractor, and LVL1’s doomcano.

Thanks, [JAC_101]!

12 thoughts on “Fidget-Spinning Robot Out-Uselesses Other Useless Machines

  1. I’ve come across a few fidget spinner spinners; This one (http://www.instructables.com/id/Fidget-Spinning-Robot/) is kind of similar to the one above, mechanically spinning the spinner, albeit using a basic servo-driven arm, while this one (http://www.instructables.com/id/Electromagnetic-Fidget-Spinner-Accelerator/) is maybe a little more interesting, using coil to turn the spinner into a simple brushless motor.
    Also, in trying to make this reply, I’ve discovered that it’s near impossible to search for a fidget spinner spinner…

    1. Well, the first thing I thought of when I read your post is ‘yeah, been there, worked with those people myself’.
      Second thought was that while one person in the office is sitting in his cubical playing with a fidget spinner is a waste of money, having this on his desk means all the others are going to gather around him and watch the damn thing, and the whole office goes to pot.
      So, yeah, uselessness cubed. At least.

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