draicairgid
New Member
Hello Internet!
So, not long time ago I made prop from ff13-2, that bow-blade

Friend asked me to make it automatically transformable if possible... And I accepted the challange!
There was a long long time of thinking everything through and how it should work. Also at that time I bought myself a 3d printer (wanhao i3v2) and it was obvious to me that bow will be mostly printed. (3d printing is a great tool for props and currently I'm building another one myself)
I started modeling blades in blender, I was newbie but blender is great and i raised skill fast.




After figuring out ways of moving the blades I printed some gears and modeled most of the prop. Later I understood that mechanical parts must be modeled very precise cuz after printing I had to cut and drill some more to get good fit and proper movement. Some parts took about 5 versions to get it right.

After some mods to my printer I printed blades pretty succesfully. Limit in hight forced me to cut blades in 7 parts.




Also was concerned about weight of the blades cuz they must be light for easier movement and less abuse on motors, and printed parts was ideal solution.

After modeling and printing of the small detail pieces I started blades assembly. I used CA glue and a bit of soldering iron to connect 7 pieces together. Later on I discovered great method of friction wielding pla parts which I now use always. And parts from aliexpress arrived at that time. I used big lipo battary and mg995 servo motors with arduino nano.

To get rid of printlines i sanded it all with 100grit sandpaper and covered with multiple layers of filler primer(on which I'm allergic to, and I discovered it in that moment lol) and sanding of that primer. Also I wated to make little things on sides move with the blades cuz they are positioned differently in blade and in bow position, so i came up with simple hinges.
When most of pieces was sanded smooth I started to work on adruino and motors. I'm also noob in that kind of stuff but I learned a lot. First pair of motors was burnt by powerfull battery, only then I bought proper mosfets, thing is that mg995 under load can draw up to 5 amps and that can lead to overheat and lots of problems, but eventually I made motors move as needed, but not quite.

On this photo handle can be seen, battary was inserted there.
At this moment overall assembly began. I had to make shure that blades are moving ok before paitning. This is first test.
[video]https://www.instagram.com/p/BN65tuDFo7Q/?taken-by=bruneng[/video]
Motors was placed somewhat like this with 45degrees gears and blades has aluminium rods which held by lowprofile bearings.
View attachment 701738
I used here standart servo library from arduino and ardublocks cuz programming is too hard lol))) Problem was that blades moved too fast and hard, if it hits something or someone it can be painful or blades could be damaged, so I searched for solution... Found a guy who is a techer in robotics class for kids and he told me that there is a library VarSpeedServo. Besides speed of servo that can be changed there are a lot of other usefull features. Based on first scetch I wrote new using old code as a base. And result was great, blades moved not that fast to be a problem anymore, movement was smooth)))
[video]https://www.instagram.com/p/BOFZiPvlS0m/?taken-by=bruneng[/video]
That was final big step after which I began painting. Very stright forward here, used tamiya and mr color with my crappy airbrush. Gem was made with regular two part epoxy.



The box and hadle was hard to put together but evetually wires was inside. One switch for power and one to change position.


Final step was to protect prop from its user. It is pretty solid overall with wood as a core and everything bolted and glue is minimal BUT design itself make this thing very fragile so I had to come up with some casing, this is what i did.
[video]https://www.instagram.com/p/BPN17LCloPK/?taken-by=bruneng[/video]
And after sucsessfull delivery this is final prop.
[video]https://www.instagram.com/p/BPNpyY0FQsa/?taken-by=bruneng[/video]
Overall I think it turned out good, but it has some glitches with one motor sometimes which will concern me for a long time.
Thats pretty much it, sorry for pics quaity it was taken on the phone.
I hope it was somewhat helpfull, feel free to ask anything.
So, not long time ago I made prop from ff13-2, that bow-blade

Friend asked me to make it automatically transformable if possible... And I accepted the challange!
There was a long long time of thinking everything through and how it should work. Also at that time I bought myself a 3d printer (wanhao i3v2) and it was obvious to me that bow will be mostly printed. (3d printing is a great tool for props and currently I'm building another one myself)
I started modeling blades in blender, I was newbie but blender is great and i raised skill fast.




After figuring out ways of moving the blades I printed some gears and modeled most of the prop. Later I understood that mechanical parts must be modeled very precise cuz after printing I had to cut and drill some more to get good fit and proper movement. Some parts took about 5 versions to get it right.

After some mods to my printer I printed blades pretty succesfully. Limit in hight forced me to cut blades in 7 parts.




Also was concerned about weight of the blades cuz they must be light for easier movement and less abuse on motors, and printed parts was ideal solution.

After modeling and printing of the small detail pieces I started blades assembly. I used CA glue and a bit of soldering iron to connect 7 pieces together. Later on I discovered great method of friction wielding pla parts which I now use always. And parts from aliexpress arrived at that time. I used big lipo battary and mg995 servo motors with arduino nano.

To get rid of printlines i sanded it all with 100grit sandpaper and covered with multiple layers of filler primer(on which I'm allergic to, and I discovered it in that moment lol) and sanding of that primer. Also I wated to make little things on sides move with the blades cuz they are positioned differently in blade and in bow position, so i came up with simple hinges.

When most of pieces was sanded smooth I started to work on adruino and motors. I'm also noob in that kind of stuff but I learned a lot. First pair of motors was burnt by powerfull battery, only then I bought proper mosfets, thing is that mg995 under load can draw up to 5 amps and that can lead to overheat and lots of problems, but eventually I made motors move as needed, but not quite.

On this photo handle can be seen, battary was inserted there.
At this moment overall assembly began. I had to make shure that blades are moving ok before paitning. This is first test.
[video]https://www.instagram.com/p/BN65tuDFo7Q/?taken-by=bruneng[/video]
Motors was placed somewhat like this with 45degrees gears and blades has aluminium rods which held by lowprofile bearings.
View attachment 701738
I used here standart servo library from arduino and ardublocks cuz programming is too hard lol))) Problem was that blades moved too fast and hard, if it hits something or someone it can be painful or blades could be damaged, so I searched for solution... Found a guy who is a techer in robotics class for kids and he told me that there is a library VarSpeedServo. Besides speed of servo that can be changed there are a lot of other usefull features. Based on first scetch I wrote new using old code as a base. And result was great, blades moved not that fast to be a problem anymore, movement was smooth)))
[video]https://www.instagram.com/p/BOFZiPvlS0m/?taken-by=bruneng[/video]
That was final big step after which I began painting. Very stright forward here, used tamiya and mr color with my crappy airbrush. Gem was made with regular two part epoxy.



The box and hadle was hard to put together but evetually wires was inside. One switch for power and one to change position.


Final step was to protect prop from its user. It is pretty solid overall with wood as a core and everything bolted and glue is minimal BUT design itself make this thing very fragile so I had to come up with some casing, this is what i did.
[video]https://www.instagram.com/p/BPN17LCloPK/?taken-by=bruneng[/video]
And after sucsessfull delivery this is final prop.
[video]https://www.instagram.com/p/BPNpyY0FQsa/?taken-by=bruneng[/video]
Overall I think it turned out good, but it has some glitches with one motor sometimes which will concern me for a long time.
Thats pretty much it, sorry for pics quaity it was taken on the phone.
I hope it was somewhat helpfull, feel free to ask anything.
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