This assignment drove me nuts (in a good way). I had a whole lego tractor rigged up with an axle that was linked to the dc motor using a rubber band. No matter what I did to get the tractor moving, there was so much lost traction in the setup, I couldn't get it to really drive other than in fits and starts. This was a combination of lost traction, the extra drag created by wires attached to the breadboard and the surprising weight of the vehicle. From there, I moved on to a number of other attempted setups and each had a familiar problem - I couldn't get over the lost traction because the dc motor pin was so slick. I'm still not sure what the best bonding technique is - I tried erasers, corks, tape, clips, etc. and the motor seemed to break free from almost everything over time.
Which leads me to the mixer. I found an old, cheap mixer from a Williams Sonoma gift and decided I could live with damaging it for the sake of the project. I bent the handle top so that it wrapped around an eraser tightly. Then I taped the entire setup to give it extra durability. Once that was done, I could stick the dc motor into the eraser to create enough traction to spin the mixer. I added a handle using a chip bag clip and the end result was a fairly legitimate mixing apparatus.
Items used:
(1) Arduino Uno Board
(1) DC Motor
(1) Battery Pack
(1) Transistors
(1) Resistor
(1) Diode
(1) Potentiometer
(7) wires (not including extension wires)
(1) rubber band
(1) eraser head
(1) chip clip
(1) mixer
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