Hexbug Cardboard Tube Track

Hexbugs are a recent favorite toy of Aiden’s. What’s not to love about small robots that race around tracks and through tunnels? Grab your own little robot and create a hexbug track from cardboard tubes. So easy and so fun!

Build a Hexbug Track with Cardboard Tubes

Do you save cardboard tubes? We save all of ours and are always finding a use for them. Sometimes Aiden builds towers with them. Other times he creates rockets or monsters. They are great for pretend play as they can become anything you can imagine.

Today the cardboard tubes became a hexbug track.

Some of our tubes were painted and some were not. Aiden cut some of the cardboard tubes in half so we could see the hexbugs moving through parts of the track.

Assembling the track was super easy. Insert one tube inside another or tape them together.

We tested the track with a hexbug as we built each section. We noticed the hexbugs traveled from one tube to another better when they were going down.

When going from a tube to a ramp (half tube), place the tube on top of the ramp.

When going from a ramp to a tube, place the ramp on top.

Aiden cut holes in a few tubes so we could create turns in the track. Our hexbugs always seemed to turn to the right out of the connecting tubes. You may need to fiddle with the connections to get the robots to go the way you want or set the track up with tubes on both sides of the turns.

It’s fun to rearrange the tubes and create different tracks for the hexbugs.

See a video of our track in action:

What kind of track will you build?

More Fun Uses for Cardboard Tubes

• What Can You Learn from a Cardboard Tube? Have fun exploring a giant cardboard tube.
• Alphabet Puppets and Matching Game – Use the cardboard tubes as a resting place for alphabet puppets.
• Build a bridge that you can take a part and put together again and again.

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