Let’s Get Tinkering

Create your very own Christmas themed automata

Explore simple mechanical machines, tell a Christmas story and give life to your characters and creations by building your very own moving machine. Automatas are the perfect way to combine engineering with art.

Get your tools and materials ready!

• Plastic cup or yoghurt cup
• Scissors
• 15cm or 30cm ruler
• Straw
• Pencil
• Tape
• X 1 Piece of foldable cardboard 60cm by 8cm
• X 1 Piece of cardboard around 15cm by 4cm
• X 1 Piece of carboard around 20cm by 20cm
• Carboard or paper or other recycling & craft material to make your puppet
• Hot glue gun or super glue – Adult Supervision Necessary
• X2 Kebab sticks – Adult Supervision Necessary

Try it out!

Step 1

Prepare all the materials and tools that you need in front of you.

Step 2

Start with the long piece of cardboard (60cm x 8cm). We need to fold it into 4 equally sized parts.

• Take the ruler and pencil, measure 15cm on the cardboard and place a mark. Repeat for another 2 times at the 30cm and 45cm mark.
• Then place the ruler on the first 15cm mark and fold the cardboard upwards. The ruler will help you to create straight folds. Repeat on the other points.
• Fold the cardboard into a square box and tape the ends together.

Step 3

To strengthen the box, cut four triangles from the 15cm x 4cm piece of cardboard, and hot glue/tape them to each corner of the box. You should feel that your box is now more stable.

Step 4:

Let’s start building the moving mechanism.

• Take a kebab stick and pierce a hole midway on the two opposite sides of the box so that it sits horizontally across. This kebab stick will be used as a handle to rotate your Christmas puppet. We call this a lever.
• Take the second stick and pierce the top of the box right in the middle to make a hole.
• Remove both kebab sticks.
• Insert your pencil in the hole at the top to make it slightly bigger. (Do not widen the side holes)

Step 5:

We’ll now be creating the spinning part of your automata – the cam, and the cam follower.

• Take the 20cm x 20cm piece of cardboard and your cup. Trace the top and bottom part of the cup on the cardboard.
• Cut both cardboard circles to form the circulars which we call cams – these are the rotating part of the machine.

Cut the cams smoothly and make sure that one cam is bigger than the other.

Step 6:

The holes that you will be creating in your cams will affect the motion of the automata. In our case, we pierced the cam close to the edge so that our puppet will be able to turn and move up and down as well.

• Create a hole in the small cam, off-centre and close to the edge, by using a kebab stick.
• Pass the kebab horizontally through the side of the box that you made in step 4, insert the cam, and pass the kebab stick through the hole on the opposite side of the box.
• Take the larger cam (cam follower) and insert a kebab stick directly in its centre to make a hole. Remove the kebab stick.
• Insert the kebab stick in the top hole that you made in step 4 and insert the larger cam to see how it will look. The two cam need to be in contact with each other.

Step 7:

We need the larger cam to move freely. But if we leave the kebab stick vertically inserted as is, there will be too much friction, which will affect the movement of the puppet. To avoid this, we can use a straw.

• Take the straw, cut a piece around 6cm long.
• Insert the straw in the top hole.
• Pass the kebab sticks through the straw.
• Insert the larger cam. The large cam needs to sit directly on top of the small cam – i.e., the two cams needs to be touching each other.

We call the top cam the cam follower because when you rotate the kebab handle, the small cam will move and will transfer its motion to the cam follower. The cam follower will then move, which will make the puppet on top move as well!

Step 8:

We can now glue the cams in place. Use your glue to glue around the straw, and around the cam and the cam follower where the kebab sticks are passing through.

If using a glue gun, adult supervision is required.

Step 9:

It’s now time to make your Christmas puppet! We made a Christmas tree in our video but you can make any Christmas puppet out of recycling material, cardboard or paper.

When you’ve designed, created and painted your puppet, just attach it to the vertical kebab stick using tape or glue.

Step 10:

Make your puppet move! To make it turn and move up and down, you need to slide the cam slightly off-centre underneath the cam follower.

Share your automata with us on social media by tagging us on social media @esploramalta #esploramalta #getcuriousgetinspired

Take it further!

The way you align your cam and cam follower will affect the motion of your puppet. Try to change the size, shape and placement of your cams to see how it affects the motion of your puppet!

Show us what you’ve made! Take a photo of at least 4 of your favourite activities from Esplora’s Science Advent Calendar. Trust us, you’ll need them later!