We always enjoy seeing our products being modified, revamped and DIY-ed, as well as the results of these transformations.
Our customer Vera Kark provided us with some thoughtful feedback on adding mechanical tweaks to improve our Solar GraviTrack build and documentation. She also painted the brown MDF of the machine. She used tempera paint on the wood components still in panelized form, and the GraviTrack's performance seemed to be unaffected.
The GraviTrack looks great in vibrant jewel tone colours, however, we do not recommend applying paint to the hand mechanism itself. You can paint the base and the rails, avoiding the hand mechanism completely. The moisture and the thickness of the paint might affect the precise tolerances of the moving parts, and will interfere with its proper functioning. Another relatively safe option might be felt tip marker since the moisture from alcohol evaporates quickly.
Photos & video by Vera Kark
P.S. Also, a particularly bad idea is painting your GraviTrackafter the assembly is completed. Even though we were using a very watered down acrylic paint, the mechanism seized up the moment the paint became sticky. Don't be like us. Take care of your GraviTrack.
Solarbotics will be at the Calgary City Teachers' Convention Thursday & Friday February 11-12, 2016. We will demo a variety of educational kits for teachers to use in classrooms, including introductory kits to develop skills in programming, mechanical construction, and soldering. Come put a face to the name at booth 326 and find out how […]
We've been getting requests for the parts bundles as mentioned in Gareth Branwyn's book 'Absolute Beginner's Guide to Building Robots'. We're sorry to say that we don't have them ready yet (major website development takes up staff man-hours), so please bear with us - we're working towards having something together. And no, we don't have […]
If you'll recall correctly, in last week's news post I said something along the lines of "Keep an eye out for new PICAXE bundles in the coming week." But I was quickly bound and gagged by a pack of vicious lawn gnomes (packing lawn gnome-sized guns, no less), preventing me from fulfilling the promise. So […]
Solarbotics has been operating for more than 25 years, bringing electronics know-how and supplies to both the electronics professional and hobbyist. We'll be happy to help you too!
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Warning: This product contains chemicals known to the State of California to cause cancer and birth defects or other reproductive harm. Please visit www.P65Warnings.ca.gov for more information. This item was manufactured prior to August 31, 2018.