The Gyrocup (5/19/2017)

Lets get to know each other a bit. Actually, I guess it’s more you getting to know me a bit better. Anyway, I don’t really drive. Sure, I can, but I don’t. Instead I bike everywhere, and plan to continue doing so until I can’t anymore. I mean seriously, biking everywhere keeps me in good shape, and maintaining my bike is way cheaper than maintenance on a car, not to mention gas, so I have more money in my pocket. One of the things I do with that bit of money I’ve saved is buy tea. No, I don’t drink coffee, and I’m usually a reasonably energetic person. I’d like to say I just wake up and spring into action, but that would be lying. So I drink tea in the mornings to help me wake up. Here’s the catch: I can’t ride my bike to school and carry tea at the same time, so people driving cars have that on me.

My solution is a passively stabilized gimbal that holds a cup of tea steady while I ride my bike. Now, if you couldn’t tell by now that I’m pretty in to 3D printing, you must not have been reading very closely, but my go-to solution was to design a gimbal that I could print in-place and bolt onto my handlebars. The reason for printing in-place was so that it wouldn’t need any assembly after being printed, and so I could start one print and then have it done in the morning. Bolting it to my handlebars was the obvious place, since then I could drink my tea at a stop light, and I would still be able to see it while I was biking.

The key piece that makes this work is ensuring that the center of gravity of the cup is below the gimbal pivots. It took a few tries to get the size just right, but once I did it worked really well. The roads out here aren’t exactly the smoothest, my commute consists of some gravel roads, some paved ones, and occasionally muddy or snowy roads, but the Gyrocup holds up to all of them surprisingly well, keeping my tea from spilling and making it easier for me to get to school energized.