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9 Volt Racer by mraiser

Who was tired of the other animals making fun of it for being slow.  It happened one day that this snail won the lottery and decided to buy a fast car.  He insisted the dealer paint a large letter “S” on every side of the car.  When the dealer asked him why, the snail replied, “Simple.  When people see my zooming past, I want them to say, ‘Wow!  Look at that S-car go!’”

Okay, this 9-volt battery car by mraiser is pure printed awesome.  I like the idea that it can just be snapped together and you’re off to the races. ¹  The directions indicate that the parts need to be glued in place.  While it looks like gloppy hot glue from the pictures, the parts list suggests it is crazy glue.  Most crazy glue includes acetone which would actually melt the ABS – so if you use it, be careful.

There are so many directions to go with this little car.  How about swapable covers for a Lamborghini, Mini Cooper, or VW bus?  How about custom printed bearing wheels? If you check out Jerome Demers’ “Beetle Robot”, you can see how he made a little toy that will change directions when it hits an obstacle.  With an extra motor, you could probably build a similar system into this little toy car.  Or, you could change up the gear teeth or gear sizes² to make it go even faster. ³  The wheels on this little racer a nice, but they could probably have a whole lot more grip.  You could use tires made from helical gears for extra traction.  If you look closely at the pictures on j_seigel‘s rubber band pull-back car, you’ll notice an interesting use of rubber bands used as rubber rims for the plastic tires.  I suspect if you stretched a thick rubber band over helical gears, they would make for great tires.  If your car got a lot larger, you might even be able to use the robot frog legs as a suspension system.⁴

Rubber band pull-back car by j_seigel

1. So to speak. [↩]
2. Or both! [↩]
3. Or slower? [↩]
4. Frog legs and escargot jokes?  What the heck?!? [↩]