Tumbler
Built by Geoff Carter in June 2007
This model is from Bernard Perier’s Zkwyx Meccanaut book (the adventures of a space-travelling rabbit, from the planet ‘Meccania’). Tumbler lives on the planet Malaxia. He spends his mornings swallowing (he has no teeth) pieces of branch and foliage, brought down by the heavy storm malaxia experiences every night, along with large pebbles from the nearby beach; afternoons he ‘tumbles’ (like a stone polisher) — this reduces the foliage to a digestable mulch; evenings he sits around chatting and digesting his feed and ‘dumping’ the now worn pebbles, and nights he sleeps.
The model is driven by 1 of the current 3–6v motors, through two 19:1 gearboxes in series and demonstrates his tumbling.