Circuit Bending

FrankenBUZZ Gun

SO I recently thought it would be fun to get a little into circuit bending. I started with reading up on some basic electronics and buying really cheap toys to experiment on. Thankfully I was given this Buzz Light Year Toy Gun about 2 years ago from a family friend so I started on this...


Tools you'll need:

• Something to circuit bend (should be cheap and fun! HINT Go to dollar store.)
• Tools for Deconstruction and Reconstruction (screw drivers, wire cutters...)
• Soldering Gun or Station
• Rosin Core (Solder wire)
• Jumper cables or Electrical wire
• Solder sucker (highly recommended great for those soldering messups)
• Some form of trigger (Button, switch, Potentiometer, Screw)]
• Basic back round knowledge on Electronics

Step One: Deconstruction


The black dot you see on the chip is pretty normal...It's drop of black epoxy which covers a chip containing the bell circuit. Most companies that produce and make these kinds of small gadgets and toys do this so no one else can steal their chip ideas / designs. Think of it as the digital heart of this circuit, It's what's making and storing all the information within the chip. You can also see the button beneath the trigger that starts the circuit when triggered and the battery connection further down.

Step Two: Finding the "Bend Points"


You can do this in a number of ways. The easiest is to lick your finger and touch the chip in numerous places until you start hearing some cool and weird sounds. BE CAREFUL. Depending on how your gadget is powered you can shock yourself and or damage the circuit board and then your just left really upset and a little shocked...(no pun intended)

If you look to the left of the black dot you'll see a yellow and blue wire that have been soldered to the board. I found right above the solder spots "R1" which means the resistor is located here. As soon as I put my finger here I instantly started hearing some really cool sounds. My next step was to solder the wires to the points that were generating different sounds when touched.

Step Three: Adding "Triggers"

Now that we have our wires soldered to the points that were producing some funky sounds the next step is adding triggers to the other end. 

For this you can use:

• Buttons
• Potentiometers
• Switches
• Screws

I decided to wrap the end of the wires around a separate screw that would later be screwed into the gun from the outside. So basically when you trigger the gun as soon as you put your fingers on the screws it cuts the circuit and starts producing the circuit bent sounds.

Picture of wires wrapped to screws

Screwed from the outside

A view of the insides...

A little blurry but here's the left side screw wrapped to the cable.

Final Step: Reconstruction and Testing!

Now that we've done everything else and tested it, all that is left is to put it back together, and Circuit Bend! You can find a free Sample Library of this FrankenBUZZ under the "Sample Library" Tab! 

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3/2/12 Circuit Bent Toy Gun #2

Recently purchased a new toy gun to circuit bend... here's a pic before ripping this sucker apart.

Finding some spots....

Connecting the soldered wires to the screws..

A pic of the finished circuit bent toy gun...

You can find a free Sample Library of this Toy Gun #2 under the "Sample Library" Tab!