It's Made From Trash

Post date: May 10, 2012 7:47:31 PM

Here's my first run of the actual door flap. Hopefully it won't be too heavy. The door itself is cut from the case of an old VCR. The wood is cut from scraps of other projects. The door latch is the coil and bumper from an old doorbell I had to replace and of course a small spring from something I took apart. I will need to do something to make sure that the shaft doesn't turn and I'm either going to grind it down so that it's just a wedge or build up the back side with something. Either way it will need to be flat on the door side so that the cat pushing against it won't cause the pin to lower. All told the whole pin mechanism is way larger than I had planned but my experiments with the bobbins weren't working out very well. I think ultimately the magnets I'm using just aren't powerful enough to really give the coil something to grab a hold of. The metal bumper pin from the doorbell gives it far more traction and thus it is actually able to overcome the spring that would otherwise hold it in place.