At the end of October we announced the Buy, Break, Build series kick off with “The Santa-pede Challenge“. *The goal was to get your hands on one of those annoying dancing santas, tear it apart, then use its parts to build something that walks. We got our hands on some cool prizes and even got [Phillip Torrone] to be a guest judge. Join us after the break to see just what we came up with and maybe have a few laughs.
So, as you can see in the video, this contest was a complete failure. We didn’t get a single entry. I quickly tossed this horribly lame attempt together in about 30 minutes. I’ll show some pictures of what I did, just for fun. It really doesn’t technically “walk” so much as it creepily scoots across your desk making you question your life decisions.
Here’s the beginning of the disassembly. Nothing amazing here. You can see that his lower half is a solid plastic piece (not jointed or motorized).
Here is the basic breakdown of what I did. I cut off the feet, Removed the servo that made his hat flip back and forth, and melted the middle piece to for the leg things. There is a wire that went into santa’s arms. This was too thin and flexible to be*useful*for much of anything so I just tossed it in the parts bin.
I couldn’t find the attachment for my propane torch, so I had to resort to some pretty questionable tactics. I wouldn’t recommend using a space heater to get your plastic soft for most projects. It did get the job done though. *After putting this piece back on, all I had to do was tweak the newly created “legs” until it pulled itself forward. Its pretty pathetic, I know. It was meant to be the joke entry that made all the others look good.
What we would like from you, are ideas. What contest ideas do you have? What would you compete in? What item can you think of that has tons of hacking potential for a variety of skill levels?
Filed under: contests, news
