ThePropBox
Active Member
Hi everyone! 
Since I’m finished with my Gravity Gun replica (http://www.therpf.com/showthread.php?t=239884) I’m starting a new project because it feels it would be the right time to try out some new things I learned in the near past. And by that I mean motorizing stuff by using stepper motors, servos, drivers and all of the controlling which comes with it.
Haven’t done anything like this in any of my projects before so I ordered myself some steppers and started playing around a little bit; to see what is possible and what isn’t
That gave me the inspiration to start on this very project, a completely animatronic version of Wheatley, the humorous robotic sphere you definitely know if you ever got to play one part of the Portal series by Valve.
Back when I worked on the Gravity Gun I already started drawing all kinds of sketches to give me an idea how I could tackle the project at best. Wheatley isn’t a quite difficult character to construct when it comes to his overall shape but the challenge definitely lies in working out his internal mechanics.
I have studied Wheatley’s behavior quite a bit and came to the conclusion that a few of his moves are impossible to recreate while keeping the inside clean and not having it stuffed with mechanical parts, gimbals, gears and motors.
Luckily @Fishbowl here on the forums was such a great help on the overall project by providing me with detailed views of Wheatley’s model from the game. Thanks you ever so much man, I really do owe you one
After weeks of thinking, trying and fooling around I came up with a mechanism which will hopefully fit perfectly inside Wheatley without compromising in variety of his movements too much.
It’s not yet done to 100% but I’m so hyped for this project so I couldn’t wait any longer to get it started. I’m sure a few things will change while working on it but basically the main stuff is done already.
What I came up with so far is as follows; all of it has been done in AutoCAD and 123D Design. Like I said it’s not finished completely but the only major thing which is left to be done is constructing the eye-part and all the mechanics in it.
I will explain the mechanics which are used to move the parts as I go along with the process.
Here's a brief overview of the model so far.
The purple thing is a micro servo which is used to pull the upper and lower bars on wheatleys front up and down. Same setup on the lower side.
And here's a little animation
What will be possible function-wise is as follows:
Now to the compromises I had to take due to stability issues:
The inner sphere won’t move back and forth as it does in the game since I would need a fixed anchor point to rotate the sphere around. I could use the outer shells for that but the reason they aren’t really strong nor do they connect to form a robust volume I scrapped this idea (for now).
I open for any ideas though! Shoot them at me!
However, let’s get started with the project!
I started with the idea of roto-casting both of Wheatley’s spheres from Smooth-On 65D but scrapped the idea fairly quickly as I started working on the 3D model. Reason behind that is simply the amount of additional detail and functionality I need to build up within the spheres themselves; be it channels to route and hide cables, have certain holes and flanges integrated in them to fit several bearings, you name it!
As 3D printing is a thing now I decided to have the spheres printed in their full glory!
I haven’t done any 3D printing before but got a hold of things quite quickly and so I started working on the 3D model of Wheatley which came out pretty well for my first try on 123D design *pats myself on shoulder*
The printer itself is in my case a Wanhao Duplicator i3, a pretty low-priced yet awesome quality printer which got an 200x200x180mm build volume. Was going for a Lulzbot TAZ5 first, but the price wasn’t justified in my opinion as it’s five times as expensive as the Wanhao.
Let’s continue. Here are the finished outer shells which are going to get attached by magnets and hold onto the inner, thicker sphere. The magnets are seated inside the pockets along the mounting rail. So it’s quite easy to remove if some work on the inside needs to be done.
I thought a lot about how to print the shells in the best way possible and the build volume of my printer happens to be perfectly in size for splitting up the two outer shells in only three parts each.
And the ring can be printed as one part!
The two pocket holes in the inner sphere will contain magnets aswell to have the outer shells align better and give them a good hold.
The curved bumps on the inside are for putting bearings inside them. Those are used for having the rods of Wheatley’s upper and lower bars on the front rotate smoothly.
The movement itself will be done by using servos, but more to that later on.
Here you can see one part of the outer shell barely fits on the bed of my printer!
:lol
Sorry for the text avalanche but I’m so exicted to show you what I’m going to have next sitting on my workbench
I will be on vacation next week, however expect an update in the week after!
Cheers to all of you and thanks for checking out!
Mario
Since I’m finished with my Gravity Gun replica (http://www.therpf.com/showthread.php?t=239884) I’m starting a new project because it feels it would be the right time to try out some new things I learned in the near past. And by that I mean motorizing stuff by using stepper motors, servos, drivers and all of the controlling which comes with it.
Haven’t done anything like this in any of my projects before so I ordered myself some steppers and started playing around a little bit; to see what is possible and what isn’t
That gave me the inspiration to start on this very project, a completely animatronic version of Wheatley, the humorous robotic sphere you definitely know if you ever got to play one part of the Portal series by Valve.
Back when I worked on the Gravity Gun I already started drawing all kinds of sketches to give me an idea how I could tackle the project at best. Wheatley isn’t a quite difficult character to construct when it comes to his overall shape but the challenge definitely lies in working out his internal mechanics.
I have studied Wheatley’s behavior quite a bit and came to the conclusion that a few of his moves are impossible to recreate while keeping the inside clean and not having it stuffed with mechanical parts, gimbals, gears and motors.
Luckily @Fishbowl here on the forums was such a great help on the overall project by providing me with detailed views of Wheatley’s model from the game. Thanks you ever so much man, I really do owe you one
After weeks of thinking, trying and fooling around I came up with a mechanism which will hopefully fit perfectly inside Wheatley without compromising in variety of his movements too much.
It’s not yet done to 100% but I’m so hyped for this project so I couldn’t wait any longer to get it started. I’m sure a few things will change while working on it but basically the main stuff is done already.
What I came up with so far is as follows; all of it has been done in AutoCAD and 123D Design. Like I said it’s not finished completely but the only major thing which is left to be done is constructing the eye-part and all the mechanics in it.
I will explain the mechanics which are used to move the parts as I go along with the process.
Here's a brief overview of the model so far.
The purple thing is a micro servo which is used to pull the upper and lower bars on wheatleys front up and down. Same setup on the lower side.
And here's a little animation
What will be possible function-wise is as follows:
- Moving the eye-corpus 25° in every angle possible from its original position.
With the Movement of the eye-corpus both vertical and horizontal rails move too.
- Moving the eye-pupil 15° in every angle possible from its original position. Rails move too.
- Moving Wheatleys eye-lids independently from fully open to nearly fully closed.
I can’t make them shut completely due to the lack of space inside the corpus. There will be a gap of around 5mm left.
- Rotating the “bucket” in Wheatleys backside around 40° to the left and right.
- Moving Wheatleys front bars on the top and bottom independently to get even more expression.
- Having a proper sound module embedded to bring Wheatley to life and add personality.
- Controlling Wheatley via a remote app.
- Voice regonition.
- Using Wheatleys “flashlight”-function as seen in-game.
Now to the compromises I had to take due to stability issues:
The inner sphere won’t move back and forth as it does in the game since I would need a fixed anchor point to rotate the sphere around. I could use the outer shells for that but the reason they aren’t really strong nor do they connect to form a robust volume I scrapped this idea (for now).
I open for any ideas though! Shoot them at me!
However, let’s get started with the project!
I started with the idea of roto-casting both of Wheatley’s spheres from Smooth-On 65D but scrapped the idea fairly quickly as I started working on the 3D model. Reason behind that is simply the amount of additional detail and functionality I need to build up within the spheres themselves; be it channels to route and hide cables, have certain holes and flanges integrated in them to fit several bearings, you name it!
As 3D printing is a thing now I decided to have the spheres printed in their full glory!
I haven’t done any 3D printing before but got a hold of things quite quickly and so I started working on the 3D model of Wheatley which came out pretty well for my first try on 123D design *pats myself on shoulder*
The printer itself is in my case a Wanhao Duplicator i3, a pretty low-priced yet awesome quality printer which got an 200x200x180mm build volume. Was going for a Lulzbot TAZ5 first, but the price wasn’t justified in my opinion as it’s five times as expensive as the Wanhao.
Let’s continue. Here are the finished outer shells which are going to get attached by magnets and hold onto the inner, thicker sphere. The magnets are seated inside the pockets along the mounting rail. So it’s quite easy to remove if some work on the inside needs to be done.
I thought a lot about how to print the shells in the best way possible and the build volume of my printer happens to be perfectly in size for splitting up the two outer shells in only three parts each.
And the ring can be printed as one part!
The two pocket holes in the inner sphere will contain magnets aswell to have the outer shells align better and give them a good hold.
The curved bumps on the inside are for putting bearings inside them. Those are used for having the rods of Wheatley’s upper and lower bars on the front rotate smoothly.
The movement itself will be done by using servos, but more to that later on.
Here you can see one part of the outer shell barely fits on the bed of my printer!
:lol
Sorry for the text avalanche but I’m so exicted to show you what I’m going to have next sitting on my workbench
I will be on vacation next week, however expect an update in the week after!
Cheers to all of you and thanks for checking out!
Mario
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