“As a child, I used to pester my dad and mom for toy motors; however, my chippie father couldn’t afford them frequently. Then, one day, he got an old tricycle from the junkyard, made three wood wheels, and geared up them to the cycle. I used to ride it at some point of playtime within the evenings as a five-year-vintage,” recollects Arunkumar Purushothaman, who works as a nurse inside the Idukki District Hospital in Kerala.
Today, he’s famous for developing scaled-down motors models that aren’t just showpieces but are operating toys. With his experience in carpentry, interest in technological know-how, and passion for motors, he first made a jeep in 2014 as a present for his son, who became a little one then. “I didn’t want to boost a toy car layout from the shops; I desired to create something using my abilties.
So, he spent around three months reducing open and molding metal sheets from antique gadgets, sourcing the motor and battery, designing add-ons from plastic cloth, and so on. “It retook me to my school days while as a Class X student, I made a working miniature of a backhoe for a science exhibition and gained an award.
It was usually in me to put together reputedly unrelated matters to make something new and aesthetic that could additionally move,” he says. I could make a higher-looking jeep than the ones I saw within the showrooms. And it wasn’t just my son who enjoyed driving the jeep, all people in my own family did! They had been all excited to see the two-foot jeep trundle round in our backyard.” He uploaded a video of it on YouTube, and progressively the views and subscribers for his motion pictures grew.
Arunkumar has additionally made a motorbike, and his modern-day is an autorickshaw that is all 3 feet. His video on the mini automobile starts with his seven-year-vintage son, Madhav Krishna, and three-12 months-antique daughter, Keshini Krishna, dancing to a peppy tune from the famous 1990 Mohanlal-starrer Aye Auto. “The mini car model is a specific reproduction of the auto ‘Lalettan’ rides within the film; even the number plate is the same,” says Arunkumar, a die-tough fan of the Malayalam megastar. “I also posted photographs of the actor internal.”
Fitted with a 24-volt DC motor, Arunkumar’s auto weighs approximately 70 kilograms and may pull a weight of 150 kilograms. “Even a person can take a seat on the returned seat and trip the toy auto, as soon as the leather top is eliminated,” says Arunkumar. The most velocity is 20 kmph, and the automobile can run continuously for 4 hours after charging the battery completely, which takes about five hours.
The front body of the toy car is crafted from an old satellite tv for pc dish, at the same time as the kicker and accelerator are made of fuel range pipes. “I heated and formed them to shape my requirement. As stove pipes are stainless-steel, they may be smooth to bend,” says Arunkumar, who took seven months to finish the car.
The headlight of the auto belonged to a vintage bicycle. “I retained its hood. However, I replaced its dynamo mild with LED. I continually opt for timber for making wheel discs so that they may be robust and robust. On the pinnacle of the disc, I pasted rubber lining that’s used for resolving car tires. I labored at my own pace, and the idea became to no longer use any new metallic/material as a long way as viable. I made it with junk cloth, except for the battery and motor which I bought.”
Now, Arunkumar gets inquiries from everywhere in the country, from parents and children. “But as this isn’t my career, I have constrained myself to make toy motors for my kids,” he says. “However, I couldn’t turn down a request from a ten-12 months-old most cancers survivor in Thiruvananthapuram. So, I am making a vehicle for him and desire to gift it to him in a few months. In destiny, I need to design a low priced, convenient, and multi-functional wheelchair for paraplegic sufferers.”
He adds that the most critical undertaking in making models is getting the measurements correct. “Otherwise, the version gained’t look proportional, and the final shape might not be accurate. I measured and rode an actual car to apprehend the size in assessment to a grownup human before scaling it down for youngsters.”
