When we did a post last fall about the growing popularity of fidget spinners, we had no idea just how popular that post would become. It has been one of our most popular articles since. And the fidget craze has only grown.
There are now spinners of every shape, size, and material, with growing levels of lethality as people weaponize them with blades, spikes, and other pointy-bits, and spin them up with compressed air. I’ve had to cringe looking at some of these more reckless endeavors (not included here). Funny how a fidget toy, designed to be mindlessly played with while on the phone, in a meeting, or brainstorming ideas, has quickly turned into an arms race.
Here are a few of the more fun, over-the-top fidget creations to date. Search on “fidget spinner” on YouTube, Instructables, etc. to see dozens of additional projects.
The Cactus! Workshop gets in on the action with a gigantic spinner built around a huge bearing snagged from a junkyard.
In this video, Italian maker, Gianni Pirola, shows you how he made an LED-illuminated big spinner.
The delightfully-crazed Giaco Whatever may have been the one who started the extreme spinning challenge when he used an air compressor to rev up his spinner to over 99.999 RPM (as high as his meter could read).
Ray Pena made a Batman spinner that became hugely popular. People asked him if he could make a Spiderman version. Of course he can.
One of the reasons there are so many fidget spinner variations and projects online is that spinners are really so dog-simple to make. They are nothing more than a ball bearing in the center with some weighted material around it to add mass and momentum to the spin. That mass can be nearly any material and take on nearly any shape. In this video, a fidget spinner is made from little more than a bearing, some bottle caps and bolts, and a rubber band.
