Yet Another Fidget Toy

I got inspired by "Fidget Toys From Trash" by bulsuryana and "Fidget Cube" by TexP. Here is my idea for a Fidget Toy from (almost) trash.

• Materials:
  
  • 2 Bottle caps
  • Bunch of tactile buttons
  • Joystick module
  • Push button
• Tools:
  
  • Sharp knife (e.g. utility knife for cutting carpet)
  • Rotary tool
  • Hot glue gun
  • Pliers, diagonal pliers/side cutters
  • File
  • You

My tactile buttons contain 2 legs each. Just by coincidence, grooves on the sidebar of the cup fit perfectly to my tactiles legs. So I drilled around the cup a holes in a configuration 2 consecutive holes in grooves, then 2 empty grooves and again 2 holes.

I put them all together just to check if everything fits and looks nice, then I removed them before the next step.

Using a sharp knife (I used an utility knife) I cut a rectangular hole for my push button. I pushed it inside just to check if it fits. I removed it before next step.

I put all the tactile buttons into drilled holes. For every one of them I bended its legs so push button could be placed there. Then I flood it in hot glue and I left it to cool down.

After some measurements I noticed that the joystick's plastic bottom part (the part which looks like umbrella) is way too big for a cap. So I needed to make it smaller. But then I noticed another thing, that even if it is smaller, joystick's moving range will not be sufficient. So I decided to cut the hole bottom plastic and I left it open on top of the cap. Maybe it doesn't look very well, but thanx to this I can move my joystick all around with full range.

I used pliers to roughly cut the joystick's PCB to round shape so it could fit inside the cap. I tried to make it very precise so the joystick was placed exactly in the center of the cap. After many-many tries I was able to center it quite accurate.

First I put some glue on the bottom cap (on top of the last layer of glue which was added in the 1st step), so I could glue the joystick's bottom part directly to the bottom cap. Joystick's PCB part was shaped so it fit to the bottom cap as well. After cooling, I removed glue which left over.

Then I put a little of hot glue around the bottom cap's edge (and also some on the joystick) so I could glue the top cap on top of the joystick.

To make a tactile buttons to stay in place, I put around some hot glue on both sides.

And now I have a fidget toy. My kids love it. Unfortunately, after 5 minutes, they started complaining "Why it doesn't have any lights and battery inside?" ;) It means I need to improve it. Maybe in version 2.0...with lights, lasers, fireworks etc...

On the last photo next to my fidget, there is another one - a kind of fidget cube - built with 9*6=54 tactile buttons and a lot of hot glue. But this one is a different story...