Custom Nightwing Escrima Sticks

[IAmTheClayman]

Hey all,

First off: Merry Christmas, Happy Hanukah, etc, etc. Hope everyone is having a good holiday.

So fresh off my first build here (a wearable Arc Reactor, I try not to take sides in the great Marvel/DC debate) and with some free time over break I decided to start prototyping my next project. Since the arc reactor was made almost entirely out of acrylic and laser cut by operator's at my university's fab lab, I wanted to do something a bit more hands on this time. So I figured that making a set of aluminum Nightwing Escrima sticks would be an interesting challenge. The design is original, but based on the escrima sticks used by Nightwing in Arkham City, Injustice, and basically any other iteration with the "shock top" look to it.

I've got two concept renders, a full color and an Ambient Occlusion pass (because ******* do Amb Occ passes look gorgeous for some reason.)



The plan right now is to build the sticks using 6061 aluminum and paint the whole thing black, since I definitely don't have enough cash to send it someplace to get anodized, and I'm not sure if the guys I'm living with would be thrilled with me doing it in our house. I'm also planning on running a basic circuit through the whole thing so that the "shock top" actually flashes and plays a loop of electrical humming and crackling. I'm not sure how best to do that, since my electrical skills are limited. If anyone here is an Arduino expert I'd really appreciate it if I could pick your brain a bit.

I'd love some feedback - this is the biggest project I've worked on to date and I could definitely use some direction on this one

Cheers,
TheClayman

 

[IAmTheClayman]

Hey all,

Few things tonight. First off, bought my first Arduino - the Pro Micro - and started messing around with it. I can't even describe how giddy I felt working with a microcontroller the size of my thumb. Started writing some simple code to create the random LED flashes that simulate arcing electricity, tested it out on a breadboard and it looks great!

Now onto what's become typical in my life: unexpected size issues. Turns out the smallest microSD + audio breakout boards you can find are all slightly over an inch wide (1.07", 1.09", etc.) Since my original plan was to buy aluminum tubes with inner diameters of .87" and 1" obviously I had a problem. Easy fix, just went with slightly larger diameter tubes, but as a result the piece looks a little beefier now. I happen to like it though



You may notice that I placed the on/off switches in this new design. I found these cool little toggle switches on Sparkfun that have a blue LED on the tip, thought they would work well. I'm hoping they can fit, since there's no dimensions listed on the site (which of course is always a good sign.) On Monday I'll be reaching out to the company for some clarification.

And that's it. Hope everyone is enjoying the holiday break, and good luck on whatever winter projects you might be working on

 

[pinder91]

That's a pretty slick concept. I'm looking forward to seeing what you do with it. :thumbsup

 

[IAmTheClayman]

Hey all,

Probably my last update on this for a while - between New Year's, a family trip to New Orleans and prepping for internship applications I'm not going to be ordering any parts til I'm back at school. Which is fine since I need access to the Fab Lab in order to get much done anyway.

So tonight I have a wiring schematic. Be warned,this is a pretty large image



Explanation time, for those of you into this sort of thing. The brains of this operation is an Arduino Pro Micro microcontroller, similar to this one on Sparkfun's website (although I got mine from the excellent Tinkersphere in NYC so it happens to be blue.) The second bit of electrical wizardry is the VS1053 breakout board from Adafruit, which connects to the Arduino and takes a microSD card as input. The rest of the parts are simple enough: blue and white LEDs, a 1.1" diameter metal speaker, and that rocker switch I mentioned in my earlier post (btw, Sparkfun was fantastic about getting me the info I needed. They didn't have the dimensional data online, but after a quick live chat and a ~ 1hr wait I got an email with the measurements I needed.)

So how does it work? Whole thing is powered by a 12V Energizer A23 battery, which runs into the rocker switch. When the switch is turned out the blue LED in it glows and it sends power to the Arduino. The Arduino then turns the blue LEDs on indefinitely while flashing the white LEDs at random - that's my fake arcing electricity. At the same time the VS1053 will be activated, reading the microSD. When the switch turns on it'll play a charge-up sound, followed by an infinite loop of humming and randomly crackling electricity.

And that's it, nice and simple. Apologies if that schematic is tough to read, I wanted to keep things roughly accurate in terms of each component's orientation so I don't confuse myself later on

Happy New Year's everyone!

EDIT: Okay, so when I said I was done before, turned out I lied a bit. Realized that just in case I can't get access to a knurling tool, or if the process is just too difficult for my skill level, I should have a plan B. And as backup plans go, I'm pretty happy with this one



Still nice and grippy for the discerning crimefighter, but now the raw aluminum is restricted to the handle portion only. Honestly this looks even sleeker than the first version, and it's kind of reminiscent of the tiger rattan pattern a lot of actual escrima sticks have. Curious what you guys think

 

[Chodan]

Wow this looks awesome! The first design really looks modern and tactical and cool, but the second design looks sleeker, and does kind of remind me of the pattern on some rattan escrimas. I think that because of the slight throwback to traditional escrima markings, I like the second one more. I was planning on making some Nightwing escrima sticks using real polymer escrimas as the base, but if you ever end up selling these, I might just go with yours haha. Anyways, your concepts look amazing, and I can't wait to see where this goes!

 

[IAmTheClayman]

Hey all,

Been a while since I've been on, you know how real life tends t get in the way of projects. I've ended up doing a lot a lot of shoring up of my design, getting quotes on aluminum and practicing lathing techniques on scrap metal to make sure what I want to do is actually feasible. All of that, I'm happy to report, has led to this.

[video=vimeo;118310537]https://vimeo.com/118310537[/video]

You may notice that in the end I decided to go with both regular grooves AND knurling on the main shaft, because sometimes I can be an indecisive git. However, I'm happy with the overall design and I'm looking forward to starting some real work in a few weeks once my workload simmers down a little.

 

[skittle76]

Good stuff. Check out the ones that I make. Link in Sig.