DIY Art Spinner Toy with Basic Speed Control Via Common Emitter Circuit

This is an art spinner machine which is a turn table platform that spins paper and creates really cool patterns when paint or markers are applied to it.
January is a month of Birthdays and celebration! I was inspired to build this art spinner toy for my nieces up coming birthdays.
Music by Chris Burns, ADVANZD BEATS
/ advanzdbeats
I built this out of an old computer (or power supply) BLDC fan and a cake container lid that I got from GoodWill a long time ago. The BLDC fan would serve as the spin table and the cake container lid would serve as a splatter shield and housing. The cake container had a hole in it from a previous experiment so I mounted the BLDC fan on a circular piece of wood and glued it to the bottom of the cake container to patch up the hole.
I wanted speed control to control the rate of how fast the turntable would spin, not so much that it was necessary but simply so I can play with a transistor circuit and use up some parts I acquired from a liquidated Radio Shack.
The speed control circuit is a very rudimentary common emitter amplifier circuit using a NPN transtor. The bias is controlled by a 5k potentiometer and a 1k is to protect the potentiometer from burning up. Everything is powered from a 12V wall adapter (which I hoarded).
I wired up the circuitry and the speed control worked just fine.
I cut out a cardboard disk to serve as a turn table. In order to mound the cardboard to the fan, I used the top of a plastic bottle. I glued the neck of the bottle to the axis of the fan and the bottle cap to the turn table. This way I could remove and replace the turntable if needed.
The art spinner seems to work just fine. It is fun to drop splatters of paint on it as well as to use different colored markers to decorate paper.

[@jpjay1584]

you need to thin the paint with water. then it works way better