Like bubbles? Then you’ll love this 3D printed bubble blowing machine. It’s capable of blowing approximately 14,000 bubbles… per minute.
Designed and released on Thingiverse, the array of bubble orifices are 3D printed, as well as the gears and chain that rotate the belt of bubbles. The only thing not 3D printed is the 5 gallon bucket, some aluminum extrusion for mounting it rigidly, and the 50RPM motor that spins it around.
Place the bucket in your driveway, hook up a big fan behind it, and Bob’s your uncle — you’ve got 14,000 bubbles a minute to play with. Is it bad we want to see someone set this up inside a house?
If you want to get really fancy, you could also get a high-output fog machine to fill the bubbles with smoke for greater effect — or just make giant bubbles with this bubble producing machine inspired by the space program.
[via Gizmodo]
Oh – My – God. Where would we be today without 3D printers?
Probably sat making things like this out of Lego (:
exactly where i am. i don’t have one, and have never used one. i make-do plenty fine with superglue, a dremel, a knife, and a whole box of random parts.
very cool, but i cannot work out the math behind this…
Rings per revolution, revolutions per minute, bubbles produced per pass.
I can get the formula, just wondering what numbers the author used to get to 14000.
Sometimes multiple bubbles per ring before it pops. It looks like 30 rows of 5 rings and it seems the entire thing cycles twice a minute so 300 minimum per minute. So maybe each ring does about 500 bubbles before the film breaks or the ring goes back down? I am curious about the math logic on this as I usually get around 10 per ring per dipping with cheap stuff. A DIY stuff made with witch hazel can last longer but not 500 bubbles from a single dipping.
Hey there, I posted a bit more detail in another response, but TLDR is that it’s 40 wands with 6 bubblers per wand and they rotate past the fan roughly 10 times per minute with each bubbler producing between 0 and 10 bubbles per pass or 0 to 60 per wand (most around the 2 inch mark). Depending on the wind speed and the bubble solution I get anywhere from, what I’m estimating to be , 2,000 to 8,000 per minute and use up a gallon of fluid in about 20 minutes without a large amount of waste on the ground. I have a better video here on a day that was less windy https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k7cAFCntlr0 (sorry for the quality, I’m awful at video). The die off after the burst of bubbles is what happens when the wind picks up. The main trouble I’m having is that the wands are dense enough that the fan blowing through the back side gets interrupted and becomes a bit more turbulent then I would like, which is why Im using the big fan, But that means even a moderate breeze in the wrong direction stops the bubble generation cold. Next step is to reduce the number of wands by putting spacers in between every other one to see if I can get better airflow. Thanks for checking it out!
@Jason,
By my eye approximation you get about 2 sets of 6 rings per second, that is 720 per minute. This would require about 20 bubbles per ring. This was not visible in the first movie, but you may say it is getting closer in the second one.
Although if you were feeling crazy maybe you could record it in high speed and then, maybe using software, check how many it really produces.
I think the math is a bit off. There are 6 rings on each “tread”, and just guessing, but around 4 treads per second is the speed it appears to be moving. That would be 24 bubbles per second. 24 x 60 = 1440. Only off by a zero.
What’s an order of magnitude between friends?
you get more than 1 bubble per ring though before the film is too thin to support more bubbles. try it :-)
I think he’s got the fan blowing a little too hard. Many are popping immediately.
Each ring will produce more than 1 bubble. Typically blowing into a single dip type ring makes 20-ish small bubbles.
That’s a great point.
Now we need to build a bubble quantifying machine. Ni er generated, average lifespan, etc.
Now fillt it up with paint!
Maker here. Some totally legit questions have sprung up about the actual capacity of this machine. The math I used is (40 wands * 6 bubblers * 8 bubbles each) * 10 rpm which comes out to 19.2 . That number was derived from taking a single wand and testing it in front of a fan. No chance all of the bubblers will fire though so I took 70% of that to get the max which is roughly 14,000 per minute. In practice it’s anywhere from 2,000 to what I estimate to be around 8,000. At 8k you can’t stand in front of the thing, but it has to be a calm day for that to work. I think 14k is doable but you need to add some sugar to the bubble solution to make the bubbles firm up. The videos are somewhere in the 2k range because it was a windy day . It’s heading to a family event this weekend though and I’ll take some more video that will hopefully show it pumping out a ton more. Hope you enjoy making your own, let me know if I screwed up the math (I am not a smart man).
Thanks for sharing! Any chance you could clue us in on a good recipe for bubble solution?
I don’t know one off hand but IIRC, The Klutz’s book to big bubbles has a recipe, IIRC#2 it involves dish soap, water, and sugar.
Instructables has a “solution” (pun in_10_dead)
http://www.instructables.com/id/DIY-Bubble-Solution/
I use the glycerin version, but you can strengthen store bot bubbles by using a teaspoon or so of dissolved sugar.
1/2 (500 ml) cup dishwashing detergent
4-1/2 (4.5 liter) cup water
4 tablespoons (60 ml) glycerin (available in pharmacies or chemical supply houses)
I wonder if this could be simplified to only needing a pump by keeping the sheet of loops static and pumping the solution from the top.
hmm, I think I understand what you’re saying, how would the wind make it through the sheet and the wands?
yes it can, a good few bubble machines use this method instead of dipping, this one for starters: http://hackaday.com/2015/07/06/worlds-greatest-bubble-machine-born-of-space-program/ but they tend to be rarer because of gundging up the pump over time
Have you thought about integrating the airflow by mounting a matrix of say 4 computer case fans or similar to the center post. That’s the first thing I envisioned after seeing this. It may solve the turbulence issue plus it would be self contained. The little store bought bubble machines don’t seem to need huge fans to put out a pretty good stream of bubbles. With a variable speed controller you could dial it in to maximize bubbles and minimize early poppers.
PS very cool. My kids would go crazy over this.
I have a source for some of the 12v fans that they use in industrial outdoor telco gear enclosures. I’m going to pick a few up and try that next, great minds and all that :)
I saw a clip somewhere of a setup to reduce turbulence involving a lot of drinking straws.
Now I remember
“A low-cost flow straightener can be constructed using drinking straws, as they have low cost and good efficiency. The MythBusters television show used such a construction for their wind tunnel, as did an experimental wind tunnel at MIT (Maniet). The straws should be cut to equal size and placed in a frame.”
could make a difference. would be an interesting experiment
OMG how epic would that be. Gather up a couple thousand straws, attach them to the front of the fan that is blowing the home depot bucket bubble machine.
I wonder if it would get better results from a smaller fan at a closer distance
Anyone else think of the Lawrence Welk Show? Anyone?
Was it really necessary to 3D print this, wouldn’t fishing net have worked just as well? Ah well, hit it Don Ho!
Interesting idea, but I dont think fishing net would have held up. I looked on ebay for a place to just buy the wands in bulk but never found what I was looking for.
Just go to a busy park on a nice day and steal the wands from wandering kids :)