I have been experiencing issues while in reverse (it gets stuck) and also while forward, occasionally the top part - arm with the rubber band, falls off. Do you have any tips or workaround?
Hi George,
Sorry about this inconvenience, I have just finish building and testing the GO - Spirograph and have some solutions to the following issues:
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For the issue of the plate not rotating forward and backwards I found that the red gears attached to the white large plate were not connecting fully causing the top piece to not spin correctly.
To fix this I replaced the two red shafts connecting to the red gears with green shafts and have replaced the bottom white large plate with a dark gray large plate in order to attach a yellow connector and orange large beam. this is so the green shafts don’t wobble as much and locks them in place so the top can spin without issues. -
For the issue related to the pen holder falling out due to the red pin not being strong enough.
For this you can replace it with any shaft begin held by the rubber shaft collars and this change will allow for you to be able to use the Spirograph with no chance of it coming apart.
I have attached pictures down below with these changes and I hope these changes work for you. We will be implementing these changes to this build on GO Robot Build Instructions - Downloads - GO - VEX Robotics soon:
Hi @George_Kalaidopoulos - first of all, Welcome to the PD+ Community! One thing that I’ve found with the Spirograph build is finding the right tension on the actual marker/pen/drawing tool that I’m using. If it’s too loose, it can drag, and if it’s slipping in the holder, or anything like that the overall movement is affected.
I tend to find that a thin marker (rather than a pen or pencil) writes more easily, and I’ve also used a rubber band to ensure that the marker is held in place better (so it’s not slipping up or down at all). Try to make sure the marker isn’t pressing hard on the paper, but just resting on top, so it can move smoothly. See if that helps to make it not get stuck so much - also if the pen can move more easily, that could relieve some of the tension on that upper arm.
I hope this is helpful!
Hey thank you for the swift reply. I will give it a shot and get back to you.
Hi, yes I tried different pens and pencils, I ended up with a BIC pen as the best result in terms of drawing. I have also mounted the spirograph on a vex plate with some pins so its easy to carry around and keep stable but seems that this results in unwanted tension to the arm that holds the pen and falls off after a few spins. Thanks for the information!
Hi . I tried the build . I can report it works, solves both. But would like to ask, is the orange beam connected to the yellow connector?
It does not align properly to insert a pin in mine and the orange beam get pulled off after a while. There are no spare shaft collars in the set to fix that.
Also , the design changed with the one in the earlier version being more pleasing to the eye. See images
Thanks
Glad to hear that those issues were solved. As for the orange beam the left most middle connections points are attached to the top two connection points of the yellow connector while the shafts are connected to the top right section of the beam. when assembled like this and using a mechanical pencil (top sticky notes) and a wooden number 2 pencil (bottom sticky notes) I was able to get an image that resemble closer to the original build and the orange beam should be stable. I’ve attached images of the connections and my results down below, let me know if this solves it for you.
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