Back when Power Core Combiners first came out, the creative minds in the community got buzzing and someone pitched an idea that went something like this:

“How about an adapter kit that would plug into the Minicon port on Minicons, and could be held by a larger robot, thereby turning the piles of useless Minicons we all have into instant Targetmasters.”​

Now, personally, I love Minicons (or Microns, as I like to call ‘em), so I don’t see them as useless, but I DO see the potential in the Targetmaster adapter idea! And while Stagwolf or a Shapeways artist could produce some kind of kit, it’s actually pretty easy to do yourself, and definitely cheaper than anything we could put in the store!

To start with, you’ll need a Minicon, and a length of acrylic (or other plastic) rod:




I like acrylic rods because they are inexpensive, easy to work with, and are very versatile. I get mine from US Plastics. Starting at four cents a foot, you can buy acres of the stuff and just play around with it!




The diameter of the rod I had on hand is just a hair smaller than the standard peg-size, so I've wrapped a layer of masking tape around it. I found that two layers was a bit too large, one layer provides just enough friction:




If I were working on turning this into a finished product, I’d want to use some other technique to bulk up the rod (paint/superglue/nail polish/future any of ‘em would do), but at this stage in the game, the tape also provides a handy surface to mark my measurement on:




I figure this length will give the grip enough length to get a firm seat in the Minicon’s port, and still have a good hand-hold for the robot:




I pop a cut off wheel in the old rotary tool, and get to slicing:




About 3 seconds of work later, and I've got a little nub of a rod. The next step is to fit my rotary tool with a drill bit of about the same diameter of the center peg of the Minicon ports. I then drill out the center of the rod:




I didn't go all the way through, but I easily could have. That’s one of the things I LOVE about acrylic rod, it drills out very easily and cleanly. Even the really small diameter stuff can be bored out with a little patience. Just be sure you keep your rotary set to a relatively low RPM, as you want to cut/drill/bore NOT melt:




Bing bang bong, one end fits snugly in the Minicon port, [and] the other seats nicely in the robot’s fist. Probably about ten (10) minutes work all together, if I wanted to paint and finish, you might be looking at half an hour.

So get out all those old dusty Microns and get ‘em back into service!

I've since found a few other sources of much more "true" 5mm posts (Not to mention being able to print my own these days), but when I was blogging one of the themes that ran through all my articles was "making use of what's already at hand".

Of course golf tees are a PERFECT example of that! This stuff SHOULDN'T be an expensive prospect.

I don't have any of the rod around to check (or the old invoices), [as] this is actually [from a] vintage blog article from a few years back. As indicated, it was a bit shy of 5mm. Google tells me 1/4" would be like 6.3 mm, so it must have been smaller than that.