- Hello, it's James for
next robots for Kota UK.
This is part two of my 3D printed guy
get inspired aliens animal suit.
Check out part one for
more about the technology.
Basically, I've got dual
extruders on my 3D printer
so I can print rigid plastic
and rubber at the same time,
which means I can make hybrid prints.
So one of the examples last time
was a wheel made of rigid plastic
with a rubber tire on printed in one go.
I'm gonna use that principle
for most of the pieces of a whole suit.
intention is it's a bit like
a scrap metal sculpture.
But instead of being made of scrap metal,
all of the pieces of custom
3D printed which means
we can get incredible detail
while still making the pieces quite small
so they fit in the 3D printer.
So this is my alien head.
I showed you last time
for my last attempts
as animal suits using clay
sculpt molding and casting.
So the plan is to chuck that away
and start again for fresh.
So let's have a look at some CAD.
So I'm using Autodesk one
to 3D design to design all the parts,
which is free software
you can download for absolutely nothing.
So my plan is that
we're basically gonna
build what's effectively
this scrap metal sculpture,
but custom 3D printed
exoskeleton type of thing,
which obviously goes outside
the wearer as opposed to inside.
So I'm gonna start with the hands.
So what I've designed
here isn't very alien
like it's basically some finger sections,
which are effectively rings
that fit on two digits of your finger.
And those are going to be printed in abs.
They've got a flat on the top of them
so that we can actually
acetone, chemically weld the,
some of the plastic parts,
at least to the top.
So we're gonna make these fingers
and print them out.
And then we're going to build
a kind of big mechanical structure
that goes over the top of them.
I'll probably wear black gloves
on these will be printed in black.
So instead of actually making a glove
that you put your hand in,
it's sort of something
that's on the outside,
a bit like an insect's
exoskeleton effectively
that's outside your body.
So that part's fairly simple.
You'll notice here as well,
I've got too many fingers.
Alien actually has effectively two thumbs,
which is why there's two here.
Obviously, I don't have
two thumbs to put them on.
But I'm going to print
the extra one anyway
just for good measure,
coz it'll probably get
bonded onto the fake thumb.
So looks symmetrical.
So we'll see if we need that one or not.
Because of the mechanical
structure on the outside,
I've only got two digits instead
of three for each finger.
Coz that's really all we need,
it's going to be coupled
onto the back of the hand.
So we don't really need that extra digit,
which is quite hard to get down
coz it's quite close together
at the point you push it
right onto your finger.
So this is what I've come
up with for the hand.
So we're gonna print the
majority of this in rubber,
so the ninjaflex rubber,
the blue parts of rubber.
We've also got these red parts
which are ABS so we can
print into materials at once.
And that'll help keep it sort of
some of the straight bits straight
and also the ABS can be chemically
Welding to the ABS rings,
which corresponds to on each finger,
we've got the two thumbs,
and then we've got one
thumb has this big piece
of red abs in it,
which means we can heat
that with a hot air gun
and bend it around and pose it in shape.
There's kind of a flat
bit at the back there
where it's gonna bond on to a cuff piece.
And being rubber of course is flexible.
So we can basically bend
that around the cuff
and that can be
shapped up
and the thumbs can be
made to point in width
and so on and then
hopefully is bendy enough
that it can bend as you move your hands
so let's have a go at printing it
Okay, so I stopped the
print once I had a fair idea
of what was going on,
so the the rigid and hybrid
rigid and rubber parts of work,
so that's been the
and that's not because it's
got that bit of ABS in there.
So that kind of would have
worked okay, but basically
this isn't really a scary alien hand.
Obviously, the rest of the
detail may have helped slightly,
but it's only marginally
bigger than my hand.
Maybe as good for a child's costume.
But you know, I think that
if we're trying to build
this kind of steampunk,
scrap metal, you know,
it's an aliens animal
for wants to kill you
and it's an it's, you know, 10 feet tall.
I don't think this is his hand.
So I've kind of lost sight lost sight
of what I wanted to do in the first place
of building this gigantic
scrap metal looking thing.
And I don't know what I've made.
So anyway,
that's the beauty of 3D printing though
coz we can soon as we see
Something in real life,
if we don't like it,
we can chuck it away
and we can start again.
So here's my version two attempt.
So I've decided what I'm going to do
is print the fingers individually,
and actually have them as separate prints.
And then we've got this part here,
which attaches it to the
calf or the back of the hand.
So I've made this look a bit more like
it's made of bits of scrap metal,
I don't know bits of pinball machines,
bearings, that sort of thing.
Obviously, this is quite a good design
to do in Autodesk one to 3D eggs,
it's very good for doing primitives.
So doing cylinders, and
doing the square shapes,
is not very good for sort
of organic sculpting.
So it's relatively easy
to draw, of course,
we've got the kind of features
that Adrian has on its fingers
and some other scrap metal looking parts.
The whole view idea again
is the blue is ninja flex,
so bends and the red is abs,
which keeps those bits sort of rigid,
and also means I can couple them
to the rings on the fingers.
So again, I've got my three sections,
and will basically print
that out six times.
And we'll stick that to the glove
and then we'll design it hand back.
So let's have a look at that one.
Right. So again, I started to print it,
I didn't even bother filming this one
and I stopped the printer again.
So here here is that the actual thing,
in reality is it's not much bigger,
it's a bit bigger than the last one.
It kind of would have fit is my hand.
Okay, so you can see where the joints are.
But I'm feeling it's a bit spindly.
It was obviously going to be wider
than this about 15 mil wide.
But I wasn't really sure
with where it bends,
if it's going to kind of bend sideways.
So it's still not really big enough
and it doesn't feel bulky enough
and it doesn't really feel like
this big terrifying alien still.
So basically, we're going
on to version three.
Right? So here's version three.
What I've actually decided is
to print all of this in rigid,
and I'll probably add
some flexible parts later
that run over the back of the
fingers and some of the hand,
other hand parts are going to be flexible
or hybrid probably.
What I've actually decided is
to build the digits separately.
And build them far bigger and bulkier.
So they're wider,
and the rotating parts have
basically a bigger radius.
So we've got a sort of finger endpoint
and then we've got three identical pieces
which fitting fit onto each other
by one turning up the
other way in the middle.
So, we've still got the feature
along the back of the finger
the same as the features
on aliens fingers,
got some holes cut out the same as before,
so it looks like scrap metal parts.
And essentially, we've got
this thing that can be rotated.
So each joint can either be done up tight
with a bolt so that it doesn't rotate
or it can be flexible,
depending on how far it sticks
over the end of my finger.
And hopefully for the thumb,
we'll just drop one of the digits off
and move it back slightly.
So we just need to print
this out a few times.
So this is a bit more like
it here, all my parts.
And obviously, as I said,
they just turn that one up that way,
and that makes the hinge joints
so we can put a bolt in there,
probably just screw it into the plastic.
And then we can pose the
joints however we wish.
It's kind of the right way
around to make the joints.
And that's Yep, quite a
lot bigger than my hands.
So it's going to fit over quite nicely.
We need to put the rings
on in the right place,
as I said the thumb piece
but we can drop a digit and
stick that on the thumb.
So it's looking pretty
good. Sideways profile.
They're much wider than the last ones.
So if we imagine that being
sort of three fingers wide,
that's gonna fit quite nicely
across the back of my hand.
So
I'm one on one on the thumb.
So let's print out a load more of those.
Obviously, we need six of
them took about two hours
to print this.
So a lot of printing get
all the parts together.
And then we'll we've printed
the rings already, in fact,
so we can start bonding
those on getting on the glove
and designing the hand back in cuff.
So I've printed off my four fingers,
which are all identical.
And I've put bolts in so
these pieces freely rotate,
and these ones are done a bit tighter
so that they're posable.
I think my finger is only going
to come into the first
section on each one.
And I've also done two of the thumbs
if you want to call them that
which are basically the same
but they've just got one section missing.
And those are obviously
one is the opposite
to the other in terms of
where the hinge pieces are.
So what we need is a hand back
Couples all these together.
But of course as well as
moving in this direction,
you probably need to be
to spread your fingers.
So we basically need some
sort of flexible joins,
I guess that couples all of these together
at the back of the hand.
So this is what I'm printing.
This piece is going to be
printed in ninjaflex rubber
on my second extruder on
my LOLs bought towels.
And basically,
obviously the fingers
go before fingers go on
to the front sections
and the two thumbs go on
to those other kind of
sections either side
and the back of your hands curved.
So we need this sort of
bridge part in the Middle,
which means we're gonna have
to print support material
in order to print this in one in one go.
I haven't printed support
material in ninjaflex before,
but apparently is possible
so we'll see how the part turns out.
I've also left some
pilot holes in the back
across the back of the hand
where these lumpy features are,
so that we can attach features
that run down the back of the fingers
or down the back of the
hand, haven't decided yet.
There's also two pilot
holes in the back of this
to attach to the rest of
the wrist and the arm.
So my printer is finished
and I've just pried it off the bed.
It's looking pretty good.
Obviously we need to remove
the support material,
which we'll do in a moment.
I just wanted to mention the
printer has dual extruders
which I mentioned in part one,
these are experimental dual
extruders one is a flex extruder
which is for printing ninjaflex
and the rear one is a
standard Gregg's wide extruder
for printing rigid material.
On the right hand side
I've got two spools here.
So this is a Lowe's box has three.
The transformer is now out
and as far as I can
tell from the pictures,
it's got an extra connector
on top of the electronics
box for instance,
easily installing the dual extruder option
which is going to be an
official product in June 2014.
As I understand it,
this is called a flexi leak
because it has two extruders
although it is experimental
but it is open source.
So if you go to Lowe's box comm,
you can download all the STL
and the firmware for a TAZ three
so that you can install jewel extruders
and print into materials at
once or one or the other.
So let's have a closer look.
Yeah, so cool up into
support material to remove.
I've used one interface layer
which makes a weaker layer
between the main print
and the support material.
So generally in plastic,
it's easy to snap out obviously
Robert doesn't really snap.
So we're going to have
to use a sharp knife
I think kind of trim down there
and start peeling that away.
So wherever there's a whole
slicer puts this stilts thing on
the outside, which is quite good
because it gives you signs
to pull in the middle of the hole out.
ninjaflex is incredibly tough staff.
So it's going to be slightly challenging,
but we need to have a go.
So that's all the support material gone.
Obviously that was on the bottom anyway,
so outfits on the back
of my hand quite nicely.
And so we just need to attach the fingers
which go through the same way with bolts,
obviously, this is bendy, which means
that we can just bend these
apart as we put a finger on
so that we can get the bolts
in. So let's put that together.
And then we'll think about
going back together rings
that I showed you at the beginning
and mounting it all on the glove.
So that's the majority of it together.
Obviously what we can do
now is spread the fingers
where these pieces are flexible
because they're rubber.
So this is for the left hand.
Sorry for the right hand.
So the right hand thumb
is screwed on tight.
On the left hand one is free to move
so you know that farm is going to be Quite
price Okay,
so when it's on my hands
it's attached your joints
and move around.
So I've got the rings that
I printed at the start,
we should attach to each degeus
I'm not sure if I need all of them
or just the fingertips and
I've got a pair of black gloves
which are just these white cotton gloves
which are the sort of thing
I think there are racing accessory.
So we just need to stick those rings
on in the appropriate place.
So you will look looks
like so the rigid piles
are printed in ABS plastic
and that dissolves in acetone.
So I've got a small
bottle of acetone here,
but can also dissolve abs in acetone
to make a sort of ABS glue
but I'm just going to use acetone
because I've already made
flat surfaces on here
and flat surfaces on the bottom.
So I can just basically ascertain well
these rings on in the appropriate place.
To match the position of my fingers
which are of course different lengths.
And these rings are different
sizes to match my fingers.
So I need to be quite careful
that I get them in the right place.
So that's looking pretty good. Obviously,
I can move all my fingers
around and I can spread them
and thumb I can move around
because of the rubber backing.
So the only thing that's a bit
weird is my other fake thumb.
So depending on that the
angle of this hand back
is gonna depend where that points,
but I just need to make sure
that's coupled on the mouth.
points to the old piece when I do it.
So I'm pretty happy
with that on the whole.
I think this is definitely
a steampunk scrap metal
inspired alien hand.
again back to the beginning this is not
so am intending to do
the whole suit like this
so you can imagine
that's gonna have quite
good visual impact.
So please subscribe to my YouTube channel
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and updates on other projects.
And also I'm gonna make
the cat files available
for this for download.
Now I do sell like hand files
for small amounts of money
generally 99 P or something like that,
and that goes back into
fund the other projects.
But if you sponsor my
crowdfunding campaign,
you can get a discount code
to get all my digital downloads
for free access to my private subreddit
on the website reddit.com
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live broadcast with me.
Have a look@patreon.com slash x robots
