haakesack
Active Member
Time for a little update to show you what I've been working on. Here we go!
I was never satisfied with the consistency of scale that I was getting from my estimates. Things seemed off, ball-parking physical objects seemed odd and after listening to a lot of Adam Savage's podcasts and hearing about his propensity to build ~10% too big the first time he attempts a replica, I decided to build something easy that I could take to Disneyland and hold in my hand to get a better feel for things.
I chose to start a better 3D model with more care and attention paid to scale and to stop before getting too far.
I built one entire ear in CAD, and decided to 3D print just the outer section to check for scale. Even when modeling, the ear was difficult to nail down. The reference images we have at the beginning of the thread are quite old and pixelated. The ear appeared to be 5" around or so and that was only .2" different from my original estimation so I figured I was on the right track.
As soon as it was on the build table of the 3D printer though it immediately seemed too large. The printer at my work doesn't have a very large build volume so I talked myself into thinking it was just contextual.
Once we arrived at Disneyland, however, it was immediately clear that it was .5"-1" too big in diameter. I returned to work and printed two more at 4.5"dia and 4"dia and have just painted them in anticipation of nailing down the dang scale.
On the electronics front...
I've acquired 2 used Electro-mechanical actuators (lead-screw type) one with 100mm (~4") of travel with some maintenance required...
...and one with 150mm (~6") of travel that hasn't been used in years.
There's going to be some work to do but both should work just fine. I need to purchase a couple serial to USB adapters to get them to talk to the computer. I intend to use these in conjunction with an arduino controlling some servos and some LEDs to get all of the degrees of freedom necessary.
That's all for now... Stay tuned for more!
I was never satisfied with the consistency of scale that I was getting from my estimates. Things seemed off, ball-parking physical objects seemed odd and after listening to a lot of Adam Savage's podcasts and hearing about his propensity to build ~10% too big the first time he attempts a replica, I decided to build something easy that I could take to Disneyland and hold in my hand to get a better feel for things.
I chose to start a better 3D model with more care and attention paid to scale and to stop before getting too far.
I built one entire ear in CAD, and decided to 3D print just the outer section to check for scale. Even when modeling, the ear was difficult to nail down. The reference images we have at the beginning of the thread are quite old and pixelated. The ear appeared to be 5" around or so and that was only .2" different from my original estimation so I figured I was on the right track.
As soon as it was on the build table of the 3D printer though it immediately seemed too large. The printer at my work doesn't have a very large build volume so I talked myself into thinking it was just contextual.
Once we arrived at Disneyland, however, it was immediately clear that it was .5"-1" too big in diameter. I returned to work and printed two more at 4.5"dia and 4"dia and have just painted them in anticipation of nailing down the dang scale.
On the electronics front...
I've acquired 2 used Electro-mechanical actuators (lead-screw type) one with 100mm (~4") of travel with some maintenance required...
...and one with 150mm (~6") of travel that hasn't been used in years.
There's going to be some work to do but both should work just fine. I need to purchase a couple serial to USB adapters to get them to talk to the computer. I intend to use these in conjunction with an arduino controlling some servos and some LEDs to get all of the degrees of freedom necessary.
That's all for now... Stay tuned for more!
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