Pete Prodoehl and Brown Dog Gadgets Showcase a Maker Tape and LEGO Hand-Cranked Circuit

Maker Pete Prodoehl has released a guide to building circuits with a difference: They're crank-activated, thanks to a clever mixture of LEGO bricks and Maker Tape.

"The latest project for Brown Dog Gadgets is a LEGO-based, crank-activated circuit. This is a simple build that uses LEGO along with Maker Tape to allow a rotating cylinder to close a circuit," Prodoehl explains. "The trick here is that Maker Tape is not just conductive, but it’s strong, and can be stretched just a bit against the cylinder to provide good electrical contact. Besides a few LEGO bricks on a baseplate we’ve got some round LEGO pieces for the cylinder, two bricks with holes, a long and short axle, and a beam with axle holes to make the handle. Overall, pretty simple."

It's Brown Dog Gadgets' Maker Tape itself that is responsible for turning what would otherwise be a simple LEGO mechanism into a functional circuit. The tape combines flexible nylon fibers with conductive material to create a sticky tape that can carry electricity — and which allows for overlapping tapes to be electrically connected, even on the adhesive sides.

The project, step-by-step instructions for which are available on the Brown Dog Gadgets, uses a mixture of traditional LEGO bricks and LEGO Technic parts with Maker Tape added. When the crank is turned, a drum rotates and completes the circuit between a CR2032 battery and an LED — though, Prodoehl notes, there's no reason more complicated circuits couldn't be made in the same way.

The full guide is now available on Brown Dog Gadgets.