Lunch Box Hovercraft

Background

Sushi from supermarket always comes with an EPS Box tray. It's kind of waste if we throw it away when we finished the sushi. Finally, I thought of a way to up-cycle the boxes, it is to make a EPS box hovercraft. With the help of my elder brother, I finally have my 1st intractable done. Woo!!

Materials

-a EPS box tray

-a Echine micro quadcopter

-a quadcopter trasmeter

-a quadcopter battery 1s 300mah

-a bottle of nail polish

-a rubbish bag

Tools

-a screwdriver

-a marker pen

-a cutter

-a cutting plier

-a circle guide

-a ruler

-a hot glue gun

-use your marker and draw vertical & horizontal centre lines

-draw 2 circles (34mm diameter) 4mm apart from the 2 centre line as photo shown

-draw a line 60mm long 15mm below the horizontal centre line

-now you have all the reference lines drawn

*this step is optional, & you can try whatever way you are good at to decorate your hovercraft. Don't limit your imagination.

-at this point it is the perfect time, to decorate my hovercraft, I chose to spray paint it.

-Mask tape the pattern you want, apply paint to it.

-Let it dry for 20 minutes.

-remove masking tape & the decoration is done.

-cut out the 2 circles alone reference lines.

-Cut the propeller guard out with a cutting plier.

*be careful, don't cut the tiny wires!

-Remove PCB from the main housing with a screwdriver.

-Apply tiny drops of hot glue between the wires and the PCB.

*I have a bad experience that my wire broken after several plays & they are very difficult to solder back together. So it's very important to apply glue for reinforcement.

In order to have your hovercraft to play in water, you need to make it waterproof

-cover your PCB with nail polish

*make sure that the nail polish cover all the visible contact points.

-Let it dry for 20-30 minutes

Now the hovercraft can work on land. But if you want it run on water surface, you need to all an air bag underneath it.

-Put your EPS box tray on the rubbish bag

-draw a square slightly bigger then the EPS box tray

-cut the square out.

-inset the front motors into the recutted round holes

-cut a small hole on the box so that the PCB can lay flat on the box surface.

-then put a little drop of hot at the very fun end of the PCB & stick it on the box.

-Stick the rear motors on the box as shown in photos.

-stick the plastic bag on table with masking tape

-squeeze some glue along the edges of the box

-then push the box onto the plastic bag

-let it dry for 30 seconds

-then cut the exceeded plastic bag out

-cut some small holes along the 4 corners of the box

* cut less hole first & try out the effect

-cut a small hole like photo to allow the battery cable lay properly inside the tray

Now the hovercraft is ready to play

-install battery & bind the hovercraft with your controller.

You can make the hovercraft flow higher & run faster by cutting more holes on the bag. However, too much holes can make your hovercraft fail. Try it bit by bit until you get the optimal floating performance. My experience is 5 holes of 1cm width at each of the 4 corners is perfect for my hovercraft.