Magic Amulet

Sep 27, 2020 | Uncategorised

Build a Magic Item

What You’ll Need

  1. Build A Magic Item Kit (with the clear acrylic)
  1. Glue (preferably hot glue)

In this activity, we’re going to be assembling our magic amulets that you all just received. To begin, pull all of your parts out of the bag and lay them out to make sure you have everything. You’re going to want to cut several small lengths of the thinner copper tape, as well as a few small circles and semi-circles out of the thicker version

STEP 1

The Base

We’re going to begin by cutting out 2 or 3 smaller circles from the thicker copper tape, and placing them in the engraved hole in your base piece. I added 2 on mine during this step now (and we can add more later, it just pads the space between the battery and the plastic)

Next, take the two curved edge pieces, and glue them onto the base in the outlined areas. You want to make sure you don’t get glue into the center circle area, as that’s where our mechanism will be turning. However, if you’re using hot glue, you should be able to easily rub the excess away once it dries

***Important***

 Make sure that when you’re gluing your pieces together that they’re as close together as possible. If you have wide gaps, the connections are going to have a harder time touching

The last thing we need to do to the base, is to add a strip of copper tape going across. This will act as the activation switch for the amulet. Make sure you follow the same direction in the photo – from top left to bottom right in between the two edge pieces. Once you have this strip in place, feel free to add another copper tape circle or two on top to hold everything in place

STEP 2

The Spinning Mechanism

Our Next step requires us to build the light up wheel in the middle of the amulet. We’re going to start by attaching the blue LEDs. You’ll notice that I’ve cut the short leg of the LED even shorter. This has a reason; you will also notice on the acrylic part, I have added copper tape on both sides – one with a longer part, and the other shorter. Attach your LEDs the same way, with the short leg resting in the groove on the short piece, and the longer leg resting in the groove going all the way into the middle

Now comes the slightly tricky part. We need to lay out our copper tape in a special pathway, making sure they don’t touch or cross other paths (I’ll explain this step better in our video chat). We can begin with placing a shorter piece of copper tape as in the first photo, just covering the left-most LED. The add a longer strip of copper tape heading up towards the right arm of the circle, crossing over the right LED (making sure we push the copper tape down over the LED leg to ensure connection). Now rotate your circle 180 degrees and do the process again.

When your tape gets the the edge of circle, its okay to cross over the gap a bit, just push it down over the sides, but remember to add a bit more tape to reinforce this part, and make sure your goes to the edge, unlike mine in the photo)

When your tape gets the the edge of circle, its okay to cross over the gap a bit, just push it down over the sides, but remember to add a bit more tape to reinforce this part, and make sure your goes to the edge, unlike mine in the photo)

STEP 3

Putting It All Together

The only thing left to do now is to put these two pieces together. Place a battery (with the positive side facing UP) on the copper tape on the base. Fit the Spinning Mechanism on top of that. The arms should fit nicely on the base, and the long legs of the LEDs should be resting on top of the positive side of the battery. Now you can attach those semi-circles we cut at the very beginning, making sure that it covers a large portion of the top side of the mechanism – when the circle is completed, it needs to be coverings all four of the copper strips on the side. Feel free to add another layer if you want to be doubly sure its connected.

The final step is to glue the engraved cover piece onto the top of the amulet. Once again, make sure there’s no glue getting inside the spinning areas, and that they are as tight together as possible. Don’t be discouraged if it takes a few tries