The Bicycle Bubble Machine

by Istareyn

Full video: http://youtu.be/-RRaYNLv_Zs Finally, be the star of commuter traffic! Make all the kids in the neighbourhood happy! Or just jealous! Engage in inspiring discussions with chemtrail believers! With the wind-driven Bicycle Bubble Machine drawing a dense stream of soap bubbles behind you, you too can bring peace and happiness back to the streets! The Bicycle Bubble Machine is a bubble machine attached to the luggage rack of your bike. I actually found bicycle-mounted bubble machines on the net, but they all run on batteries, neglecting the fact that on our bikes we have a source of energy which is much more sustainable and fun: relative wind. The Bicycle Bubble Machine only uses the relative wind created by riding your bicycle: a wind wheel will turn a wheel with bubble wands, which are blown directly by the relative wind. It works surprisingly well at a comfortable range of speeds, and with the funny, jet-engine look the machines have, when one is attached to every side of your bike, it's an eyecatcher. Well, at least it gave me a lot of strange looks when using it on the street. This is my first real project constructing something which moves. While I'm not an engineer (so please be kind!) I did put a lot of work in this (and printed lots of prototypes ...): for example the tank was supposed to be printable in one piece, store enough liquid, not store too much liquid in 'dead' places, and not spill all the time while cycling. The design now for example has bulkhead walls to reduce sloshing effects. That said: *it will still get messy*, but that's part of the fun :) While I thought about a gear system, I discarded this idea, because everything I could come up with led to a) a smaller tank, b) larger dead spaces of fluid, c) too many wind turbulences in the bubble path etc. If you're interested, I've written about the process of designing this [here](https://heinzdrei.wordpress.com/2015/05/18/bicycle-bubble-machine/) This thing is not difficult to build. I t