workshop today we’re going to be
building our very own gumball machine
using easily available parts and
materials here’s what we’ll be using to
build our gumball machine first we have
an angled plastic candy jar we have a
piece of foam core board that a lot of
the internal workings will be built out
of a plastic bottle with straight
sidewalls plastic Bowl that came in a
pack of four for just a couple of bucks
some small diameter wooden dowels of
course a bunch of gumballs the hot glue
gun a circle compass and exacto knife
and we’re gonna be using a drill even
though it’s not strictly necessary to
start off let’s take our foam core board
and start cutting out a few shapes the
first thing we’ll build is the mechanism
that catches the gum ball inside the
container and drops them down into the
dispenser here’s the basic idea of how
this mechanism will work dowel will go
through a hole in our foam core board
that will spin around and we’ll have a
small cup that can catch our gum ball
inside the container then the whole
device will be a circle the gum ball
will fall out of the machine down into
the circle with the notch cut out and
then as we twist it it will get dropped
out of the bottom into the dispensing
device now this is an extremely rough
drawing of how this device is going to
work but it does work as something of a
measurement tool we can see that the gum
ball will fit in a slot that size we
want to be sure that it’s the same
distance on all sides of our axle so we
can take a rough measurement of this
circle that I’ve drawn and we come up
with about two and a quarter inches so
that is the size of circle that we will
make our mechanism since we want our
final circle to be two and a quarter
inches in diameter we need to set our
radius at one and 1/8 inches wide
to make sure that our mechanism is wide
enough to hold the gumball well we need
to cut out four of these circles we can
see that with four pieces of our foam
core it’s wider than the gumball so we
should be able to completely contain the
gumball inside the mechanism
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like cutting the notch out of one circle
and then tracing it on to another we can
be relatively certain that we’ll get the
you
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go our gumball fitting nicely inside the
notch cut out in our mechanism now let’s
glue these four pieces together drill a
hole down through the center and we’ll
use that to attach the axle which will
be made from our wooden dowel as a test
fitting let’s fit the dowel through the
hole that we just carved see how this is
looking that’s exactly what we were
hoping for right there
mechanism will catch the gumball rotate
and drop it down into the dispenser now
you may have noticed that there’s an
issue with this mechanism if we put it
like this it will catch the gumball and
then the gumball will just drop right
out and that’s not the goal so let’s
build a box that fits around this
mechanism so that there are side walls
keeping the gumball from falling out
until we want it to we want our box to
contain the rotating mechanism but we
want it to be very close to the edges so
let’s cut out a square that’s got the
same diameter as our circle two and
we go to squares that fit just about
perfectly around our interior mechanism
now we just need to add a couple of
holes so that our axle can run through
the sides of the box as well see now how
the sides of our box are going to
contain the gum ball so it doesn’t fall
out and tell we’re ready for it to now
at this point when I turn it it’ll just
fall out on the side here because we
haven’t added the sides to our box yet
now our mechanism isn’t perfectly round
and largely that’s because when you cut
something out using the exacto knife
it’s hard to follow the lines just the
way you want sometimes the knife will be
at an angle sometimes you’ll miss your
mark a little bit to make sure that our
wheel isn’t going to start rubbing on
the sides of the box I’m looking at a
little bit of a high point here so I’m
gonna try and take that down to some
sandpaper just to make sure everything
will turn easily once it’s all put
together alright I think that did a
pretty good job none of the ridges are
standing up as higher than the others at
this point so I suspect that’ll help it
rotate even more smoothly inside our box
at this point we want to start building
our box around this mechanism so let’s
give ourselves a little bit of extra
dowel on either side clip it off and
then glue the mechanism in place so that
it’s firmly affixed to the dowel by
applying the glue to the dowel and then
pushing our little mechanism over the
glue hopefully we’ve smeared glue on the
inside in between the dowel and the
mechanism so that it will be nice and
firmly attached we’re doing that because
as I said we’re gonna want the mechanism
inside to rotate but we don’t want the
box itself to rotate with the mechanism
firmly attached to our dowel axle and
the sides of the box freely spinning
it’s now time to add the other sides to
our box measure how wide we want those
to be just by putting it down on top of
our foam core
drawing where we want to cut it
with our side pieces cut out now let’s
attach them to the other sides of our
box there we go now with the sides of
our box attached our gum ball doesn’t
fall out until it gets to the bottom and
we’re actually going to take the bottom
of our box and add a little bit of a lip
on either side so that become al doesn’t
fall out until it’s right down in the
now before we attach these two pieces
which will direct the gum bowl to fall
out into the middle we’re also going to
add a small piece in either corner to
make sure that the gum ball doesn’t try
and get stuck in this little spot when
now that we have those two pieces in
place let’s attach these two to direct
the gum ball to only fall out the very
we’ve got our mechanism assembled now
let’s test it out by dropping in a
gumball and see if we can get it to drop
out the bottom go perfect with our
mechanism built we now want to attach it
to the bottom of our angled container
the first step will be drilling or
cutting a hole in the center of our
container large enough to fit over the
opening of the mechanism but small
enough that we’re not going to have
gumballs is pouring out everywhere I was
exciting didn’t think about the bit
getting quite that much grip on the
container but it did we can now see that
if we set our mechanism right beneath
that hole it should feed the gumballs
pretty well down into it to help make
sure that the gumballs really get
funneled in let’s cut down the edges of
the sides of the box on the inside just
a little bit so that they have a sort of
downward slope into the candy catching
portion to make sure we don’t get too
many let’s raise up the bottom of our
mechanism so it’s a little bit closer to
the top that way the gumball will sit at
the very edge and then the second
gumball won’t be able to fit in let’s
the bottom of our candy bowl has just a
slight concavity to it so we want to
make our mechanism fit flush up against
that so to make it work what we want to
do is take down the edges just a little
bit at an angle so that they fit nicely
with the shape of our pool it’s like
only one at a time
fall down into mechanism now that’s just
one seat even if there’s others on top
of it they just get pushed out of the
way perfect our mechanism is now working
nicely with the hole we have in the
bottom of our Bowl
so let’s glue it in place so it’s
permanently attached we now have a bowl
and we have our dispenser mechanism so
we need to attach them to the tower in
the base that will be part of the
gumball machine to start let’s cut the
top off of this water bottle as flat and
level E as we can to help as a guide I’m
gonna wrap some tape around it and if
the tape lays perfectly straight then we
should be able to get a nice clean cut
there we go that tape is pretty straight
the fact that it met up almost exactly
where it started
means that it’s lying pretty much in a
straight circle around the bottle it may
not be a hundred percent perfect but
fortunately it doesn’t have to be
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now we can see that the whole mechanism
can fit nicely into the bottle but of
course the wooden dowel sticking out in
the front in the back is impeding it
from fitting inside so what we want to
do is trim off the dowel in the back and
then we’ll drill a hole into the front
of the bottle and we’ll be able to fit
that through the hole and have it sit
down inside the bottle entirely when our
candy container is resting on the bottle
we can see the height that we’re going
to need a hole for our turning mechanism
to leave the bottle it’s marked out with
a pen and then drill out a hole we’re
only going to want the mechanism that we
turn on the front to be about a quarter
of an inch away from the bottle so we
can trim down this dowel fair bit as
well I used some heavy wire cutters to
clip the dowel on the back but I want
the dowel to be a little bit smoother in
the front so I’m going to try cutting
through it with a hacksaw there we go
with our dowel shortened a little bit
hopefully we can now fit the whole
mechanism down inside our bog there we
go
if you gumball should be able to just
but as you can see we’re just dropping
gum balls down inside of a sealed
container so what we need to build is a
small ramp that we can connect to the
mechanism inside out to the front of the
bottle I think this will be too long but
let’s start out by cutting a piece about
four inches long
let’s make our ramp wide enough that the
gum ball can easily fit even after we’ve
added some walls that will keep it from
rolling off to the side
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that should give us a line up ramp for a
gumball to roll right out we also need
to have enough space that the gumball
can fit out the bottom of the mechanism
so we can’t have it flat up against it
of course and even if we angle it
there’s not really enough room for it to
get out we need to angle it and add a
little bit of a spacer so let’s add some
space onto the back of our ramp one
thing to keep in mind is that we are
going to want this ramp at a bit of an
angle so if we cut the bottom of our
spacer it should sit at an angle on our
ramp you can see that I’ve cut an angle
and when I glue it onto the back of our
ramp it won’t sit straight up and down
at a 90 degree angle it will sit a bit
like that
now it is going to attach to this back
portion of our mechanism so to just give
it a little bit better of a grip let’s
fill in the gap in between these two
pieces now our ramp will have something
nice and solid to attach to of course we
will need a hole cut into our bottle
before the gumballs to get out through
we can line our ramp up with our
mechanism and see approximately what
height you need to cut that hole this
will be the bottom of the hole and then
we need to have enough space for our
ramp to pass through and for a gumball
to get a good height for the side walls
of our ramp we can line our ramp along
one piece of foam core and then trace
now we have a piece that fits in nicely
but is too tall and would get in the way
of the mechanism so we need to cut off
the sidewall at the same height as this
backing piece that’s one wall of our
ramp now let’s do the same thing on the
other side now let’s use our glue to
attach the two side walls on your ramp
there we go a ramp with walls so the
gumball can’t fall out and land in the
bottom of our container I think that is
looking pretty dang good this is more
ramp than a gumball delivery system
really needs so let’s trim this off with
our gumball delivery system we also want
to make sure that it’s easy for us to
grab the gumball out so at the end of
our ramp let’s lower the wall height a
little bit so it’s easier to grab and
now because we don’t necessarily want
our gumball just shooting out onto the
floor or a desk let’s add a front piece
onto this to stop it from rolling when
you don’t want it to at this point our
ramp is complete and we just need to
attach it to our dispensing mechanism
now this might be one of the most
delicate pieces of this entire build we
need to attach the glue onto the ramp
and then fit it in through the hole and
press it up against the bottom of the
mechanism and at this point we can also
start making our other connections
permanent we can use the glue to attach
the bottle to our candy container and
run some glue along the outside of the
front of the ramp to fold everything
rigidly in place at this point all the
moving parts of our gumball machine
should be functional so let’s pour in
some gumballs and give it a test
I wanted to make sure it didn’t bounce
out it would be super easy to just add a
slightly higher wall but it doesn’t
bother me now that everything is working
at this point there are only two things
left to do
one is to cut a hole in the bottom of
this bowl so we can fit our bottle down
inside it and the other is to add
something that makes it a little bit
easier to turn our mechanism I have a
roll of tape that is almost the exact
same diameter as our bottle so I’m going
to use that to trace out a circle onto
our bowl and then cut that out nice
there we go our bottle fits nicely
inside of our bowl so let’s just use
some glue to attach that and make it
we’re gonna try and use one of these
king of random logos as our turning
mechanism so I’ve peeled the sticker off
and I’m just gonna attach this onto our
foam core and I’ll cut that out
work
now let’s see if we can get the sticker
to peel off for just a minute so I can
drill a hole into the phone cord we
apply our sticker right now the glue has
set all the way we should be able to
twist the internal mechanism by twisting
the logo let’s fill er up with gumballs
and she’ll be ready to go needs more
gumballs gumball it’s a pretty fun
little build and you can probably even
get it to work with things other than
gumballs
I haven’t tried but there may be other
small candies which would fit in here
nicely as well I think about everything
at this build from Walmart and I don’t
think I spent more than like 12 bucks
the only thing I didn’t get from Walmart
was the gumballs themselves and I got
those from my local grocery store where
they’re sold in bulk thanks for joining
us for this video and don’t forget to
come gear yourself up with hats shirts
and other cool merch at the king of
random calm see you there foam core
board that will be when you really
really need to go
you [Music]