For Christmas, J gave the family a small air hockey game. It runs on batteries. M and I decided that batteries were not an acceptable power source and set out to update it.
Here is a picture of the underside of the game. The round part is the fan that blows the air up through holes in the playing surface. The rectangular part is the battery compartment.
Our goal was to add a power jack for a 9V power supply, and a switch to turn it on and off. (Thanks to Grandpa B for the spare switch!)
Our first task was to add some wires to the fan. These wires will be attached to the switch and power jack.
Next, we drilled holes for the power jack and the switch. We soldered the wires to the connections after testing the fan to make sure we had the right polarity. The fan needs to run in the right direction to blow air out the top of the game, as the puck floats on this air. If the fan ran backwards, the game wouldn't work at all.
Then, we used a heat gun to shrink the plastic tubing around the soldered connections. Here is the bottom in its finished state.
This is what the game looks like now, with the power jack and switch.
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1 comment:
Good job.
Love,
Dad
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