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  • Author Author: fmilburn
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Makevember:  An Animatronic Mechanism

fmilburn

This has been a busy few weeks but has requested we publish something for Makevember so I thought I would oblige :-).  I am working on an animatronics project and while I haven't quite made the progress desired still hope to finish before the deadline. In any event, here is a teaser video demonstrating part of the mechanism:

I was fortunate to be able to attend the Supercon hardware convention in Pasadena California last weekend.  There were a lot of interesting talks which will be posted on youtube.  The official conference badge was a Lattice LFE5U-45F FPGA with 45k LUTs with two 64 Mbit SRAM chips and 128 Mbit flash.  It is in Gameboy form factor with a 480 x 320 color LCD and mono sound.  It came with two RISC-V cores running and a lot more stuff.

image

Somehow I feel this was meant to do more than me displaying Pop-Tart Nyan Cat on it.  Fortunately there was also something a bit more my speed: an Adafruit badge that can run Circuit Python or C/C++ Arduino was also handed out along with other goodies.

image

 

Surprise Package received today!  I received a package from Element14 with a Molex Antenna Sample kit, an Arduino Uno, the coveted blue man, and a T-shirt.

 

That's it for now.  Back to my animatronics project....

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  • Hi Frank,

     

    An intruiging video indeed image. This is my guess: looking wider I see the nicely printed 3D section sits inside a black housing - perhaps a head or part of an animals body. Perhaps the motion is taken up to move some eyes or ears on that?

     

    Looking forward to seeing your animatronic progressing.

  • in reply to 14rhb

    I guessed eye movements as well. Still, I like the gears as this is something I really want to try and produce myself. Can gears be made with a 3D printer or is the plastic too weak?

     

    Dubbie

  • in reply to dubbie

    At this point Frank is now busy changing the eyes to something else, LOL.

     

    I've made gears using the PLA filament and they would IMO be fine with the lower torques typically used in models and toys. There are other filament types such as ABS which are stronger and I've seen 3D printed gearing used in one of the Prusa i3 REPRAP type of 3D printers, as the extruder gearing...that must need to be quite strong.

     

    For proper engineering there are I believe other solutions that can create metalic products from 3D printing....but you'd need bars of gold to buy those printers image

  • in reply to 14rhb

    Thanks for the comments guys - you are generally on the right track :-)

     

    "At this point Frank is now busy changing the eyes to something else, LOL."

     

    I am busy trying to get it to work at all :-)

     

    I have used used 3D printed gears on a few projects successfully.  There is considerable skill in the design and selection of gears for critical applications and I have vague memories from long ago of taking machine design courses where design criteria were discussed but do not profess any real knowledge.  For my maker type activities it is not critical and my experience to date is good.  The ones above are printed with PLA and I also used PLA for the rack and pinion in these linear actuators for the bridge troll. 

     

    An easy way to bring an off the shelf gear into a model is through McMaster-Carr.  Find the gear needed in the catalog and double click on it.  This will give a pop-up window with "Product Detail" in the upper left hand corner.  Open this up and there will be drawings and a pull-down window at the bottom with various 2D and 3D drawings that can be downloaded.  If 3D-STEP is downloaded these can be brought directly into many CAD programs or printed directly from many slicers.  There are also other programs and methods available if an internet search is done.  Not only can the files be printed, but in the case of a more robust gear is needed it is possible to place it in the model to make sure it works and then order.  There are other sources besides McMaster-Carr but that is the one I have used.

     

    A problem with STEP files in Fusion-360 is that they can be more difficult to work with when doing certain operations.  The ones in my mechanism above were modified successfully to be thinner and the shaft hole fit the servo horns. It might be possible to bring in a 2D file and extrude it so that it becomes a regular Fusion-360 component and I need to try that.  Of course Fusion-360 and other CAD tools can also design a gear from scratch.

     

    There is a guide to using 3D printed gears that I found useful here:  A Practical Guide to FDM 3D Printing Gears

     

    Frank

  • in reply to 14rhb

    Perhaps I give gears a go sometime then. No bars of gold available so I do not think I will be 3D printing in metal.

     

    Dubbie

  • in reply to fmilburn

    Frank,

     

    This is all very useful information, especially the external link. I have already leanrt some things that will help.

     

    Dubbie

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