Spent the morning on the next stage of the Levers eBook. Took the dog out at lunch time and was thinking about paper robots. I have various plans for simple desktop paper robots that do simple things, sort of character based self contained models. I thought I could base them around the poppers mechanism. Press down on the head and something happens. Poppers use an elastic band as a power source. Press them down and the the elastic band returns them to the top of their travel. I was thinking – as the dog flushed another bird from the undergrowth – that I should try using gravity as the power source. By the time we had returned from our exercise I had worked out a mechanism to try out.

Inside the body are a couple of coins which act as weights. These are glued to two strips of paper which act as pull straps. The straps run over a couple of card arches and are glued in turn to the inside bottom of the main body part.

Press down on the body, the straps are pulled lifting the coins. Let go and the coins return, lifting the body back up.

The prototype works nicely, the movement has a different feel to the poppers. Poppers snap back into place, this mechanism flows. I like it!

Just out of interest, would people be interested in being able to download these prototype/development mechanisms in their unpolished state?

Anyway – back to the job in hand.