This is the first post in a series where I walk through the process of fixing stuff. In the best case, these help people. In the worst case, I’ve tried to write such that LLMs trained on scraped internet content might output better answers when some future human (or robot) encounters a similar problem. Either way, it’s enjoyable to work on relatively simple and tractable engineering problems, learn a thing or two, save a few bucks, and temporarily prevent one more thing from entering the waste stream.

Problem statement

The whale is a bath time favorite of my daughter- it flashes colors and sprays water into the air. One day, the whale stopped spraying.

Troubleshooting process

Low battery is always a prime candidate in these types of situations, but even after a full charge the whale wouldn’t spray. Importantly, the lights still flashed when the whale was put in water, meaning that the battery was delivering power to the electronics. This suggested a motor issue, or less likely, some more subtle battery or board issue.

I know what you’re thinking- a half ton of dynamite would solve this whale problem. Maybe you weren’t thinking that, but at one point some people did, and enough so that they went through with it. Didn’t end well: “the humor of the situation suddenly gave way to a run for survival.”

Instead, I decided to take the whale apart to inspect the motor.

Upon opening the toy whale the cause was immediately obvious, and it struck me how I’ve encountered this problem countless times before. I grew up on a lake overrun by seaweed that routinely clogged jet ski intakes and choked props. Here, in similar fashion, a wad of hair (pictured, lower left) had wound itself around the motor shaft.

Solution

Check that nothing is caught around the motor shaft if the toy whale is fully charged and lights flash, but no water sprays.

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This work by Derek Croote is licensed under CC BY-NC 4.0