Progress. In bursts.

The bubble making machine is alive! Well, not all the time. When it works, it works really well, but when it doesn’t, it just simply does not work. The worst part is, we simply couldn’t figure out why it didn’t work. Eventually after spending an entire day, we figured out the parts we needed, mechanics, and the most integral bit: the soap bubble solution.

The bubble solution was the most difficult part to crack. It really shouldn’t be that hard for a group of 20-something’s to figure out the exact ratio of soap to water to produce a consistent stream of bubbles right? I mean, how hard could it be? We experimented with different varieties of soap, all the way from hand wash to bathroom grade phenyl, to dishwasher soap. Eventually we settled on a something that looked a lot like glycerin and smelled like it too.

The structure of the bubble making machine mk1 was built from a scavenged bubble blower bought from a street hawker. The mk4 version however used advanced lightweight laser cut acrylic, lathered with layers on layers of plastic from a glue gun to make the contraption stick together and work. The copious amounts of Fevibond used didn’t do our sober selves any favours. After the Fevibond wore off, we finally figured it all out. The latest version with its turbo fans and high torque motors produced exactly what we wanted. Our aim, and I’ll quote Uttisht Varanasi here, is “make enough bubbles to make the roads so slippery that at the very least 7 cars crash. Every minute.”

With that achieved, we’re now trying to figure out the finer details of power management, circuitry, and code calibration. If all goes well tonight, we’ll be ready to show our project by tomorrow afternoon outside and inside the Conflictorium. In a slight change of plan, we plan to show showcase two variations of our project. On the streets, and if everything goes according to plan, in the auditorium inside the Conflictorium.