Three students gained publicity all over the Metroplex by building a 150 pound fidget spinner that they have also submitted to the Guinness Book of World Records.
Pratik Bhosale, a mechanical engineering senior, received three large rolling bearings for free while he was interning for an industrial manufacturing company. He and his friends Ian Bouton, mechanical engineering senior and Suhail Rahmetulla, mechanical engineering senior, then tried to figure out what to build with the large rolling bearings. Due to the current toy’s popularity, they decided on a fidget spinner.
“On YouTube, anytime we saw fidget spinners that were claimed to be the biggest, they were either made of paper or just glued together really badly. So we wanted to make the biggest legitimate fidget spinner, and on top of that it was just a fun thing that would get us a lot of publicity,” Bhosale said.
Overall, the cost of making the fidget spinner was $150, out of pocket. Most of the supplies were bought at Home Depot, but they were able to utilize other supplies and tools at the student-run UTDesign Makerspace facility located at Synergy Park North, where students can use arts, crafts, electronics and 3D printing to build and create.
As far as building the fidget spinner, the composing process involved making a design on a software program, three layers of plywood, a large jigsaw to cut out the shape and then sanding until the bearings fit into the holes.
Because the fidget spinners are popular right now, all three students and the spinner have received special attention from the school and students. They have already been featured on The Dallas Morning News, WFAA channel 8, CBS Local and KHOU 11 News in Houston, TX.
“The WFAA news channel was the most fun for us because we actually had some time on live TV,” Bouton said.
They’ve successfully gained publicity all over the Metroplex and on YouTube. Bhosale posted a video on his channel of them building the fidget spinner. The video has over 14,000 views.
The fidget spinner has also been submitted to the Guinness Book of World Records. A total of three applications have been submitted, the first for the largest forbearing fidget spinner, the second for the longest spinning and the third is for the heaviest. They will find out within the next eight weeks if the fidget spinner has made the cut for either of those categories.
For the future, they plan to coordinate a 24-hour live stream of the fidget spinner spinning and hope that with enough publicity they’ll be able to get Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson to spin it.
Advertisement
Advertisement
Advertisement
