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Thread: Making Fidget Spinners

  1. #1
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    Making Fidget Spinners

    I decided to make some fidget spinners, mostly to see if i could.

    I just finished this one, my first non-test, Cocobolo, Ebony finger buttons, and three brass cylinders to add weight near the rim. I turned down the brass for a tight fit in 3/8" holes then rounded and polished the ends.



    I bought a variety of bearings from Amazon to test. I made one spinner from a rectangular piece of scrap just to test installing a bearing. The 608 skateboard bearings are 22mm in diameter.

    A 3/4" Forstner bit is too small and a 7/8 is too large. I didn't have any 22mm bits at that point so I used a 7/8 and filled that slop with epoxy. This worked OK but I'd rather have it fit better.

    I tried turning a second one from Dogwood and used a 3/4" Forstner bit for the hole, enlarged with a round file. This worked well but was a pain in the neck.

    Here are the first three. Note that Ebony is not necessarily a good choice for the finger buttons since it is so hard the tenon needs to be very precise to fit snugly into the center of the steel bearing. A softer wood like Cherry or Holly might be easier.



    I acquired an assortment of metric Forstner bits and immediately found three different brands of 22mm bits all drilled a hole too big. I finally settled on drilling a 20mm hole, mounting the blank in step jaws in a chuck, then enlarging the hole to 22mm with a small scraper. This gave me the fit I wanted for the Cocobolo spinner.

    The problem then was how to hold the wood blank by the central hole for turning. I used a jam chuck on one then modified some Nova pin jaws to hold the blank securely against a shoulder. This worked very well!



    This shows the modified Nova pin jaws, the step jaws, the metric Forstner bit, and some of the bearings I've tried. Note that stock bearings need to have the grease washed out in order to spin freely.



    BTW, I modified the steel Nova jaws on the wood lathe using standard woodturning tools. I've turned plenty of aluminum and brass on the wood lathe but this is the first time I tried steel. I can describe this further if anyone is interested.

    JKJ
    Last edited by John K Jordan; 06-27-2017 at 7:46 PM. Reason: typo

  2. #2
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    Years ago I went to see a guy that I knew that owned the local bearing supply house. I saw one of his counter guys playing with a bearing, no spinner on it, just spinning the bearing with his fingers. I picked up some extras and made wood wheels to fit them. The counter guys went nuts over them. I was there a few weeks ago getting some bearings for my tractor and the owner and I were joking about all the money we lost since we did not proceed with manufacturing the spinners I had made about 30 years ago.

  3. #3
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    Quote Originally Posted by Marvin Hasenak View Post
    Years ago I went to see a guy that I knew that owned the local bearing supply house. I saw one of his counter guys playing with a bearing, no spinner on it, just spinning the bearing with his fingers. I picked up some extras and made wood wheels to fit them. The counter guys went nuts over them. I was there a few weeks ago getting some bearings for my tractor and the owner and I were joking about all the money we lost since we did not proceed with manufacturing the spinners I had made about 30 years ago.
    Zounds! Wait till I tell the kids I "know" the guy who invented the fidget spinner. Quick, write a wikipedia entry. :-)

    I work with a large group of of 50-70 young kids at our church (age 6-10) and suddenly, over a period of just a few weeks, it seems like most of the boys (and some of the girls) are carrying spinners. They are quite distracting when telling a story or showing a video, especially those spinners that light up. When we go over the rules at the beginning of the hour we have to add "put your fidget spinners away."

    I can't believe it but I actually bought one last week for a friend, another guy pushing 70 like me. He and I used to play with LEDs a lot in the 80s. Joe made the most amazing "light shows" by fastening colored LEDs on a stick, designing circuits to turn them on and off in various patterns, and light them while spinning the stick with a motor. The stick used multi-conductor commutators to get the power from the controller to the lights. The patterns in the varying colored arcs were fascinating. He made these from about a foot in diameter to nearly four feet (started to get dangerous!) and even made one that spun on two axis to create a lighted sphere. We had all kinds of hand-held things with flashing lights but no spinners. I took him one of those spinners with three sets of battery operated lights, three colors in each, with selectable modes to vary the flash rate. The circuits obviously vary the LED intensity by pulse width modulation so you see a bunch of dots and short segments as well as long arcs in the patterns. Joe was excited, a hand-held light show, who'da thunk it?! We also joked about never starting that LEDoodle company. :-)

    JKJ

  4. #4
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    I see you are using the carbide tipped forstner bits. I prefer the Freud bits less tear out . I like those spinners. BTW I am 78 going on 79. My grandson sure would like those!

  5. #5
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    Quote Originally Posted by Robert Willing View Post
    I see you are using the carbide tipped forstner bits. I prefer the Freud bits less tear out . I like those spinners. BTW I am 78 going on 79. My grandson sure would like those!
    Robert,

    I've tried five different types/brands of Forstner bits, two carbide and three HSS, some cheap and some not so cheap. I didn't really get any tearout to speak of, at least none visible - the walls of the cuts were smooth. (The circular cutouts on the two round spinners in Dogwood and Cocobolo were done with Forstner bits. But with three different bits a 22mm hole measured around 22.3mm - too sloppy. I did purchase a variable hand reamer with the intent of drilling 21mm then reaming, but the vendor sent me a used one, not only worn but broken by the heavy hand of the previous user!

    I haven't tried the Freud bits but I would like to. Do you know if Freud makes metric sizes and where to buy them. My google search was unsuccessful.

    I also considered (and I may still do it) mounting a 22mm HSS bit in the metal lathe and a Dremel with a grinding bit on the compound instead of a lathe tool and just reduce the diameter a few 10ths of a millimeter.

    JKJ

  6. #6
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    John: with your machining experience, seems like you could make an adjustable boring bar to get the exact diameter hole you desire. I guess similar to cross feed vise setups used on threading fixtures?
    Maker of Fine Kindling, and small metal chips on the floor.
    Embellishments to the Stars - or wannabees.

  7. #7
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    Quote Originally Posted by Mark Greenbaum View Post
    John: with your machining experience, seems like you could make an adjustable boring bar to get the exact diameter hole you desire. I guess similar to cross feed vise setups used on threading fixtures?
    Yes, I considered that and might do that if I start making these. (So far, the interest has been high but you know how fads are!) I have a good R8 adjustable boring bar holder for the mill and a boring bar for the metal lathe. I could probably get an MT2 mandrel for the adjustable holder and use it right on the wood lathe. And adjustable cross feed for the wood lathe would sure be useful for a lot of things though! I'd want one with a rotating compound slide just like on the metal lathe.

    For that one I simply used a small square scraper which I had sharpened on the side as well as the end, used as sort of a "hand-held boring bar" for the wood lathe. This let me sneak up on the fit.

    JKJ

  8. #8
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    If you want to see a bearing really spin, put one on a screw driver and use a air hose to get it spinning. Let it slide off the screw driver on to the floor and watch it go. In my machining days we would see how far we could make them go.
    Sid Matheny
    McMinnville, TN

  9. #9
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    Quote Originally Posted by Sid Matheny View Post
    If you want to see a bearing really spin, put one on a screw driver and use a air hose to get it spinning. Let it slide off the screw driver on to the floor and watch it go. In my machining days we would see how far we could make them go.
    I spun one up like that last night. What a screamer. (lubed it with silicone first) Next, I want to paint a stripe on the circumference and measure the RPM with my optical tachometer. From the sound, the 608 bearing was spinning well over 10,000 rpm.

    JKJ

  10. #10
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    Those really are beautiful! My son introduced me to these things a while back and wanted me to make him one. I didn't go through with it in part because I didn't know where to get the bearings, but also because he didn't want a solid disk and I didn't think I could create the "winged" spinners and ensure they were balanced.

    Since then, I've been equally shocked at the sudden explosion (yes, it's a fad and will probably die out) and at the number of people that have come out "against" them. To hear some of these people talk about them, they're going to be the end of western civilization... I wonder if there was similar vitriol against yo-yo's when they first came out...

  11. #11
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    Take the design of the cocobolo, and convert it to a hand spun top. Make the bearing cover on top big enough the you can twirl it with your fingers. Make the bottom bearing cover with a point. Spin the fidget one way, then spin the center part in the opposite direction and drop it on the floor. That was my favorite design, but I did not make a full cover, just made a press fit dowel with a point on one end and about a 1.5" stub on top. It drove the bearing salesman crazy.

  12. #12
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    Quote Originally Posted by Aaron Craven View Post
    Those really are beautiful! My son introduced me to these things a while back and wanted me to make him one. I didn't go through with it in part because I didn't know where to get the bearings, but also because he didn't want a solid disk and I didn't think I could create the "winged" spinners and ensure they were balanced.

    Since then, I've been equally shocked at the sudden explosion (yes, it's a fad and will probably die out) and at the number of people that have come out "against" them. To hear some of these people talk about them, they're going to be the end of western civilization... I wonder if there was similar vitriol against yo-yo's when they first came out...
    Thanks!

    The test spinner from Dogwood was in pretty good balance from the start. Although I did thin the disk to put more weight towards the outside it obviously needed more weight.

    Since I was removing more wood, I worried about the balance on the Cocobolo one and tried to measure and drill the big holes carefully. (35mm, I think) It was still a bit out of balance with a static test. (Even machined perfectly it could still be out of balance a bit due to varying density in the wood itself.)

    Fortunately machining the brass weights gave me three with small variation, 48g, 49g, and 50g. Instead of making them exactly the same I was able to distribute the weights to bring the spinner into pretty good balance. I tried spinning a few times just now and the last time it spun for 1 min 13 seconds.

    JKJ

  13. #13
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    Is this fad something like the hula hoop??

  14. #14
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    https://www.mlcswoodworking.com/shop...es/forsbit.htm

    here is a supplier of individual sizes.

  15. #15
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