Hi! I’m just a kid, and I love everything to do with computers and electronics. Making no-mess, automatic Peanut Butter Mixers is a great project for me because I get to do all those things!
I get to render the parts in Tinkercad, a 3D computer-aided-design software. I have also made earrings, a catapult, a house for LEGO people, and gears. It works by picking shapes like cylinders, parabolas and cubes, resizing them and positioning them. Then you export it as a .stl or .obj file (two major 3D file formats).
Once I’ve exported it, I send it to my 3D printer. I got my 3D printer from a friend. It’s a XYZPrinting Da Vinci Mini that uses their proprietary filament. A 3D printer works by melting filament, (kind of like plastic string, but bendy), extruding it out a nozzle, and sticking it down on the bedplate. About 13 hours later, I take it off and solder the wires.
Soldering is where you use a high-temperature iron to melt solder, (a thin piece of specially made wire that’s conductive), and apply it to two or more wires. It then forms a connection. I learned how to solder from Forrest Edwards, a retired electrical engineer who can solder to NASA standards. I have soldered a European siren, a radio, and about 20 Peanut Butter Mixers.
This is also a great project for me because I get to design my own website! I learned my first HTML (website code) in a book from our local library. Then, Dad got me WordPress All-In-One for Dummies and I learned how to use WordPress! Luckily, Dad has a friend who worked for an IT company and he helped set us up with CPanel (a web framework) and install WordPress. Now I can work on my website myself!
I made my first Peanut Butter Mixer just to use at home. Then Dad said this would be a good business project for me because I could learn about cost of materials, profit models, and how a business worked. So, we did a profit model, and figured out that I would have to sell about 14 Peanut Butter Mixers to make our first profit. Then I found some good power supplies and motors online. We sold our first Peanut Butter Mixers to friends and family and now we can sell them to you!
