I find cheap battery-powered toys interesting and since I was a child it was always more fun to see how they work than to play with them. These days I like to look at them as an engineer because they frequently have interesting ways of solving problems and always find cheap solutions rather than adding complex components.
The carnival season starts soon and this year’s theme is aliens. I got this bubble blaster and it didn’t work. I tried different batteries but nothing, so it was time to see what’s inside.
After opening it, I was immediately impressed by the switch design. It’s a battery spring contact which closes the circuit when the button is pressed.
On the other side, it just uses the metal surface of the motor to close the circuit.
After a minute of playing around with a multimeter and a wire, I realized the motor casing wasn’t connected to the motor’s ground connector.
I decided to be fancy and instead of adding a bit of filler, I added a wire. That’s it, problem solved the blaster works.
Another interesting part I found was the way they solved air intake for the soap container.
It’s expected that we will rotate it while playing.
The air intake needs to be open while the blaster is working, but if you flip it, soap shouldn’t leak.
Again a simple solution, a small metal ball in the air pipe, so if you flip the blaster the ball will close the pipe on the upper side.
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