Avatars: the Popsicle Boxing Robots

Here I'll be showing a step by step guide on how to make this fun popsicle stick mechanical robot boxers. These boxing bots are controlled by human controllers using their fingers.

The bots throw punches upon pressing the thumb control on the ipsilateral side and the winner is distinguished when he makes the opponent's head pop off after landing an upperrcut on it.

It's made with easily available items and would be a fun make with kids.

Popsicle sticks (small and big sizes)

Super glue/ Wood glue/ Glue gun

Corrugated cardboard

Paper clips

Skewers

Drinking straws

Rubber band

Button cell (4)

Bottle caps

Steel rule

Pencil

Small hand saw (or anything to cut popsicle sticks without breaking them)

Box cutter knife

Pen/craft knife

GLUEING:

In the supply list, I gave three suitable adhesives for this project each with its peculiarity.

The super glue dries the fastest and leaves no disfiguring bumps and marks on the glued part but it seems to not be the strongest among the three.

Wood glue, like the name suggests would work great at glueing the popsicle sticks to each other, but it takes longer to fully cure. It similarly binds to cardboard well.

Glue gun usage is mostly beneficial where edges are being glued together due to the little surface area in contact. The molten glue stick provides a bulk support as well as adhesion to the objects being glued.

I made use of both super glue and glue gun. Super glue for when there's a reasonable amount of surface in contact and glue gun mostly for edges and for glueing plastics (drinking straws and rubber band) and metal (butto

n cell).

The bot leg here is essentially the support for the bot structure that holds it in place while it throws punches in the air.

I made this part (as with most of the bot body) with popsicle sticks. I took two of the big popsicle sticks and cut a length of 8cm then made a hole big enough for a bamboo skewer to pass through tightly near the side at the curved tip of each piece (do not make the hole at the center, rather near the sides), took the remaining length and sawed it into two thin strips 6cm long and 0.5cm in width.

I glued the two thin strips on top of each other and then on the side of one of the big pieces where the hole was bored, then glued the other piece over it ensuring they all align well.

I cut another strip 4cm long and 0.5cm wide and glued it to the front of the assembled piece to enclose a passge that permits the up and down strokes of the lever that thrusts the bot's arm in air.

I took two popsicle sticks and cut the two curved tips of one of them and glued both together and then onto the end of the second pospicle stick. I then glued this onto the side of the piece made in the above paragraph with the stacked side facing the glue.

Following these steps, you should have a piece that resembles the final image.

The arm of this bot is where most of the action is (aside the popping head of course) and the lever connects the thumb gestures of the human controller to the punch throwing response of the bot.

To make the arm, I took a piece of the small popsicle stick and cut it obliquely at the middle. Flipped the pieces and glued it into an "L" shape. I then bored a hole larger than the skewer at the top tip of the arm at its centre through which it'll be fixed into the "shoulder" of the bot.

Later in this guide I glued a dead small button cell each to the tips of the arm to give weight to the punches. I used hot glue here.

To make the lever, I took one of the small popsicle sticks and slide it into the passage in the shoulder of the bot (to be clear, the part being referred to as the shoulder is the boxy part attached to the leg which contains a narrow rectangular passage). Also, later I glued cut tips of small popsicle sticks to the outer sides of the lever 4.5cm from its base to prevent the lever from dropping way too down.

So I have made only one half of the bot and thus would make the second part and then join them together with a piece of 7cm to give it width.

To make the second part, follow the exact same steps and dimensions as for the first part.

The two parts were joined together by hot glueing a 7cm length of the small popsicle stick to the the back near the base of the shoulders of the two parts as shown in the images. When glueing, make sure the two halves are properly aligned and none is being off from the other.

The control base has two functions, one as a support for the bot itself and the second as a bearing for the thumb controls of the robot. The thumb control is a level with a pivoting middle which when pressed down on one end shoots up at the other end. The end that shoots up is positioned under the lever for the bot arm, so when the thumb tip is pressed down (as when controlling the bot), the other end raises and consequently pushes the lever up which then hits the arm (the portion within the shoulder), thus the bot throwing a punch.

Using the provided template, the surface plate containing the rectangular holes for the thumb control, the lever and the robot legs is cut out from cardboard.

Two small popsicle sticks are taken for the thumb controls and a drinking straw is cut into two pieces, each with a length roughly equal the width of the popsicle stick. Each straw piece is glued to the middle of each popsicle stick.

I then cut two rectangular cardboard pieces of length 2cm by 1cm and punctured a hole in each with a skewer. I glued each piece frontwards to the outer side of each thumb control hole.

I passed a skewer through the holes in the cardboard guide above and passed the thumb control fulcrum (straw) through the skewer too.

Then I took the popsicle bot and passed it into the set of rectangular holes in front. the two inner holes are for the legs to pass through and the two outer holes are for the levers to pass through. I glued the legs firmly in the rectangular cut with hot glue having passed a length of 5cm down.

The stoppers attached to the sides of the levers prevent it from dropping straight out through the cuts.

To finish off this part, I cut a long strip of cardboard with a width of 6cm and peeled the outer layer to reveal its corrugation, this makes it easy to bend it around curves, then glued it using hot glue around the surface plate, then cut away the excess.

By the end of step 4, you should have made a unit of the boxing bot. Now, follow the exact same steps from the start to make a second unit.

The stage would house the two boxing bot units and permit the (human-controlled) movements of the boxing bots away or towards each other.

First, cut out the base which is a 25.5cm by 21cm rectangle with smaller rectangles of dimension 14cm by 12.5cm projecting from each of the smaller sides of the rectangle.

Next, cut two pieces of long rectangle of dimensions 33.5cm by 7cm andglue it around the sides of the larger middle rectangle.

For the final piece of cardboard which will cover the stage, cut with the provided template and pass the bots through the two big rectangular spaces in this piece before glueing it in place to the underlying support.

For the battle between the bots to be engaging we need a way to show the winner of each round. This mechanism permits for that.

The head of the bots are made to be under tension which is delicately anchored and upon being hit hard enough would pop out of its normal position, shooting outwards. This would indicate the winner of a round if your bot knocks out the head of the opponent's bot. A friend of mine referred to it as giving the opponent's bot an uppercut, LOL.

To make the head for each bot we'll need two bottle caps, a drinking straw, a rubber band, a small popsicle stick, skewer stick, paper clip and hot glue.

I took a bottle cap and cut a small rectangle to one side of it and punched a hole for the bamboo skewer to the other end of it. I inserted the skewer and glued it from the inside of the bottle cap with the bottle cap slanting forwards. I went ahead to cut a 7cm length of drinking straw and unwind a paper clip, straightened it and bent the tip into a loop and then bent the loop forward. The paper clip is then glued to the straw.

The skewer, with the bottle cap attached is passed through the straw and a rubber band was passed at one end into the gap between the straw and the paper clip in the upper part and at the other end the rubber band is stretched and glued on the bamboo skewer. Once the stretched band is released, the bottle cap is lauched up, but not out of the straw due to the attachment of the band. To lock the head, press the bottle cap downwards and pass the loop head of the paper clip into to rectangular cut in the bottle cap to hook the bottle cap against the tension of the stretched rubber band. If and when the cap is hit, the paper clip hook slips off and the cap lauches upwards.

I cut (in my case) a 6cm long piece of small popsicle stick that fits in-between the shoulders of the bot and glued the straw of the popping head to its middle and then glued the piece in-between the shoulders of the bot. Take the second bottle cap and glue it on top of the first one.

I did the same thing but with a bottle cap of different colour for the other bot.

The battle requires two opponents (which is why I wasn't able to document a proper gameplay, especially with phone in the other hand for recording), a coin may be tossed to choose which bot will be yours. The bot can be charged forwards and backwards in attack and defense. They can also be moved slightly sideways to deflect opponent's punches in defence and to aim your bot's punches at the opponents head in attack.

It's meant to be a fun make and indeed it was, it's meant to be cheap to make and it was indeed, too.

Overall, I think it's a really nice play toy for kids: robot boxing avatars made with popsicles and cardboard.