Animatronics

[Honus]

Finally getting back to the Stargate Horus project (lots of other things got in the way!) and I'm super excited to get going on it again. Right now I'm building the animatronics for my friend's helmet, which is radio control just like the original movie helmets. Here's a pic of the forward head mounting plate. The servo behind the plate allows the head to roll from side to side. The two bearing mounts are for the working eye iris. I still need to add the two iris servos, iris cups and the rod end mount to this piece. This is a lot more complex than the previous version I made. Even though this screen accurate head is much larger than my previous low budget version there really isn't much room in it and getting everything to fit properly has been pretty tricky.





Next I machined the servo mount for the iris servos-



Here's the eye iris I'm using. They measure 37mm OD x 5mm thick- perfect size! Full open to full close requires rotating the pin lever 90 degrees. Because they are identical, in order to operate them properly the right and left servos need to rotate in opposite directions. The way I've designed it the pin lever is fixed and the iris body rotates- it's housed in a machined cup that rotates in the bearing mount.



I machined the eye cups from Aluminum. Each iris is held in place with three 6-32 set screws. There is a relief cut in the side of the cup for the iris lever pin. The lever pin will be held in a fixed position so when the cup rotates the iris will open and close. Still need to attach the head pivot mechanism, iris locating brackets and eye LEDs. It's a perfect fit in the head casting… no room to spare!

The iris apertures are available from China via eBay but you can find them in the U.S, from companies like OptoSigma and Thorlabs. The trick is finding one with the correct dimensions and we just lucked out with an eBay find as they were a lot less expensive than sourcing stateside.

[Honus]

More work done. Still a few small bits to iron out and then I'll get to work on making the fans move. That's a tiny 10-32 ball link in the photo- it's threaded into a 3/8" rod and the rod has a collar with a set screw that holds it in place. The collar is positioned at the top of the main helmet body and moving the rod in the collar allows you to adjust the distance between the body and head castings to get the spacing just right.

As it turns out the servo mounting plate assembly is a tiny bit too wide- I'm going to flip the servos 90 degrees and shorten the servo arms in order to make it fit properly in the main helmet section. I could use the current setup if I changed the servo arms and used smaller end links as it would allow me to position the servos closer together but the smaller 4-40 nylon end links have a tendency to break under higher loads. I hate it when things break so a quick re design is necessary.

[defspace]

This is phenomenal stuff. I understand about 25% of what you say, but I've enjoyed every post in this thread.

Those two photos above look like parts from a Mars rover or something. Even to someone who doesn't really know what he's looking at, your skill is obvious. This stuff is so cool.

[Honus]

Thanks! My youngest son wants to make a working model of the Spirit/Opportunity rovers. If you haven't seen Roving Mars it's an awesome show.

Made a bit more progress today-

[Honus]

Finally a test video! Getting the LED driver circuit interfaced with a RC receiver was a bit of work (I let out the magic smoke in the process) but it was worth it to get the eye dimming.