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Recently, fidget spinners have become extremely popular among everyone, especially tweens and teens. While you can buy one pre-made from an online website, they can range in price, some being pretty pricey for what they are! (There are some good deals now that they have become more popular – we like watching new ones pop up on Amazon). You can now make one for less that will work just as good and as a bonus give you something to create on your own.
To make one you’ll need: bearings, quick drying super glue, and optionally metal nuts.
You can buy bearings or if you have an old skateboard you can disassemble the wheels and use the bearings from there instead.
To begin, you should decide what kind of spinner you want. The two most popular kinds are ones with two bearings for weight and three bearings for weight, but you can put as many as you’d like on the outside as long as it’s balanced. Before you start gluing make sure you have something under everything so that your spinner doesn’t stick to what you’re making it on. Place down the center bearing, then glue each bearing on the outside an equal space away from each other. Make sure you glue them equally around the center bearing as this is how it stays balanced and spins correctly. You can also use nuts instead of bearings on the outside if you don’t have enough bearings or if you’d like it to look different
Once that dries, you’re done. The spinner should spin for a little while, but the time it spins depends on the type of bearings you’re using. Another option you can add if you’d like is a shoelace along the sides for decoration or grip when spinning. There are lots of tutorials online for other ways to make spinners look nicer or easier to use.
This spinner is extremely satisfying and fun to fidget with when bored, while reading or watching a movie. While it doesn’t look the prettiest, it’s a lot cheaper than buying one pre-made. This would make a fun party activity for tweens as well!
5 Comments
Fun idea to make your own!
My son is obsessed with making these. I can’t wait to show him your post.
Mine are too! They’ve found so many different types to make!
He used up about 4 hot glue sticks attaching quarters to a bearing he removed from a broken (cheap) spinner.
If you have access to a 3D printer, there are lots of fidget spinner designes up on the website “www.thingiverse.com”. You can select a design you like and downloard it to your computer, unzip the downloaded zip file into its own file folder and then open the .STL file with your favorite slicer program. Once the 3D model (.STL) file has been sliced, the resulting .gcode file can be either printed directly over your USB cable to your 3D printer, or copied over via a SD Card (remember “sneaker net” ?!! and the SD-Card can be plugged into the 3D printer and read/printed there. The kids at our maker lab love to make fidget spinners as well. Seems the main roller bearing size is like 2.1 cm wide, and the weights for the arms can be large nuts or washers, again super glued into place.