kwartzlab – animatronic eye prototype v2

More work tonight on Animeyes, my low-cost animatronic eye matrix installation piece. This is the version 2 prototype. v2 is more representative of how the eye will be mounted in the finished piece, i.e. in upright foam board with actuator on the back. The new paper mache eyelid is heavier, I think, than the pure bond paper lid. I like the texture of the mache, but the mass is slowing the blink return down I think. The finished piece will have a smaller port through the foam board, but I left some extra elbow room here in this prototype just to figure things out.

Click through for stills…
Oh, and I need a truck with a lift gate for 20 minutes to move a donated piece of equipment that weighs about 600lbs and is on a 44.5″ loading dock. Much appreciated if anyone can hook me up with that and save kwartzlab the $150 rental fee.

now on to the stills…

Eye mounted through the board.

Dry-fit the new eyelid and it looks like it will fit.

The eyeball was awkward to get a clamp on, and I tried all sorts of crude jigs to put pressure on while the glue dried.

Then I figure out that pressing the eyeball into the board and then toe-nailing some pushpins through the back held it in place nicely.

Side view shows the quarter section cut out of the ball. Turns out that a hacksaw blade works perfectly for this cut. The hot-wire cutter will have to wait for another project. We need to go fast! Now if someone can just share with me a good clean way to cut foam board. Utility knife doesn’t leave a very clean edge. Maybe need to try the dremel. Also need
to build a jig so I can get good repeatable cuts on the eyeballs and foamboard ports.

Lid pinned in.

And while the glue dries, wind some coils. I tried the really fine wire Karl gave me, but it was very fragile and kept breaking during winding. Switched to the 36ga wire (also from Karl!) and that worked better. Made good use of the sled from my gantry crane toy project to hold the wire spool. Yup, those are appliance rollers under the spool.

spun 3 new coils. Tried to use the bottle caps as crude bobbins to contain the coil while winding, but it didn’t really

pan out. The bottom coil was simply wound freestyle without ends and it worked ok. Simplies manufacturing. ~17 ohm coil.

A little bench-testing of the actuator.

Actuator just taped in place. Used a little double-sided foam tape as standoffs to position it.

So… that’s v2.

Learned

• the mounting technique Dan suggested works awesomely
• winding the coils can be done fairly simply and quickly. For repeatability I’d still like to get a turn counter on the drill.
• might have to go back to the paper-craft eyelid. I liked its speed much better and am willing to give up the texture of the mache.

  Next up: control circuitry and scaling some of the manufacturing.

  Happy making,
  DW

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Tags: personal project