This week on Maker Update, casting eyes, a chocolate vending machine made from LEGOs, 2001 cosplay, wi-fi baby, feeding No Face, and handmade sprockets.

++Show Notes++

-=Project of the Week=-

How to Make Realistic Eyes Using 3D Printing for Animatronic Eye Mechanisms by Will Cogley
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RqZRKUbA_p0
https://www.instructables.com/id/How-to-Make-Ultra-Realistic-Eyes-Using-3D-Printing/

-=More Projects=-

LEGO Mini Chocolate Vending Machine by JK Brickworks
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bFGsgjLQXA8

2001: a Space Suit Odyssey By badjer1
https://www.instructables.com/id/2001-a-Space-Suit-Odyssey/

Star Wars Rebel Pilot Chest Box – Arduino By badjer1
https://www.instructables.com/id/Star-Wars-Rebel-Pilot-Chest-Box-Arduino/

Animated WiFi Doll By cabuu
https://www.instructables.com/id/Animated-WiFi-Doll/

-=Tools/Tips=-

Adam Savage’s One Day Builds: No-Face Animatronic Mouth!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kjxdWnUBmpU

How to Make Animatronics With the Pololu Maestro
https://maker.pro/custom/projects/how-to-make-animatronics-with-the-pololu-maestro-masterclass-maker-projects

Benefits of Thin CA Glue
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WWtXriCPhRQ

Gareth’s Tips, Tools, and Shop Tales #22
https://www.getrevue.co/profile/garethbranwyn/issues/gareth-s-tips-tools-and-shop-tales-issue-22-205318

1mm to 5mm Thickness Swatch by Roykinn7
https://www.thingiverse.com/thing:3938054

Make Your Own Sprockets by Lewin Day
https://hackaday.com/2019/10/21/how-to-make-an-electric-scooter-chain-sprocket-with-nothing-but-hand-tools/

Hackaday Supercon November 15 – 17
https://hackaday.com/2019/10/18/speakers-taking-the-stage-at-supercon-plus-a-hint-of-the-hacking-to-come/

Maker Faire Rochester
https://rochester.makerfaire.com/

-=Product Spotlight=-

How to Select Cables and Connectors for Your Application
https://www.digikey.com/en/maker/blogs/2019/how-to-select-cables-and-connectors-for-your-application

 

Transcript

This week on Maker Update, casting eyeballs, a chocolate vending machine made from LEGOs, 2001 cosplay, wi-fi baby, feeding No Face, and handmade sprockets.

Hey, I’m Donald Bell, welcome back to another Maker Update. Happy Halloween! I hope the day is filled with fun costumes and cheap candy. I feel like it’s my last chance to really pack an episode full of Halloween related stuff, so let’s start things off with the project of the week.

I’ve been keeping my EYE on Will Cogley recently. Like me, he’s become a bit obsessed with creating servo-controlled animatronic eyes. But he’s really taken things to the next level with his thorough Instructables guide and video on casting super realistic eyeballs using 3D printed blanks.

Will includes all the files you need to print up both the eye blanks and the mould you need for casting the blank in resin as a final step for the perfect, glassy eye.

It’s not a quick or easy process, but the results are so cool that I’m willing to give it a shot. Will shows how he hand paints the irises, glues down bits of red thread for the veins, casts the result and then polishes it to a shiny finish by chucking it into a drill and buffing it smooth.

What excites me just as much is that these eyes fit into what looks like an incredible animatronic mechanism that Will has teased in a previous video. Once that design comes out, expect me to geek out on this all over again.

More projects. JK Brickworks posted a video on this awesome, adorable candy vending machine made from LEGOs. He goes over all the mechanical elements that push out the candy bars, as well as the Mindstorms EV3 system of buttons and motors that make it work. 

I can’t imagine many of us have the patience to make something like this out of LEGOs, but the underlying mechanics and cool design touches could be adapted to whatever fabrication technique works best for you.

On Instructables, Badger1 has a great writeup of his quest to build a replica space suit costume from 2001 a Space Odyssey.  

His guide goes over every aspect of the suit, including sewing and modifying a custom jumpsuit. But the part I like best is the retro-tastic chest control panel and the jet pack that goes on the back — all 3D printed, sanded, primed, painted, and detailed with labels and lights. He even 3D printed the helmet. 

Unfortunately, the guide does not include the 3D files, but reading the comments it does look like he may be working on a way to sell them if you’re interested. 

I also took a look back through some of Basger’s older Instructables and found a great one on creating your own Star Wars-style pilot chest box. Again, something about those chunky vintage sci-fi interfaces just makes me happy. 

Instead of 3D printing, his take uses pieces of acrylic he cut on a bandsaw and glued together using a template as a guide. All of the electronics and LEDs hook into a single Arduino UNO. 

Finally, possibly the creepiest project this week, check out this doll that Cabuu hacked with a mini set of Wi-Fi controlled animatronic eyes. 

This build uses a simplified, 3D printed, single-servo mechanism that just moves the eyes left and right, plus another servo that turns the neck. 

The project uses an inexpensive ESP8266-based board that can be programmed using Arduino code. He also includes a version of the project that uses a PIR motion sensor to trigger the creepy doll automatically when someone enters the room. No thank you.

Now for a few tips and tools I found this week. I can’t not give a shout out to Adam Savage’s video on the construction of his costume of No Face from the movie Spirited Away. This is actually his second No Face costume, but this version includes the ravenous mouth from when the character transforms into an eating machine. 

From a tips perspective, especially with Halloween in mind, I think it’s worth paying close attention to how Adam talks about the mechanism behind the mouth design he chose after a lot of trial and error. 

What he got was a mechanism that operates a layer of lips as it opens the mouth, giving it a more realistic look.

I also love the side mission here of Jen Schachter and Mel Ho creating fantastical foam food for No Face to eat. Really, the process of how they transformed scrap furniture foam into beautiful and grotesque airbrushed food was worthy of its own video and could offer everything you need create foam Halloween props.

I’ve got a new video out going over how I’ve been using the Pololu Maestro board to bring projects to life. If you like the idea of working with servos to create lifelike movement in your projects, but dread the mess of code and Arduino libraries you need to make something you’re happy with, I’ll show you how this board takes the pain out of the process.

I’ve also got a new video up on Cool Tools with artist and model maker Chris Rummell on his favorite types of glue to use when he’s putting his models together. 

On Gareth’s Tips, Tools, and Shop Tales newsletter he’s got some spooky last-minute Halloween tips and costume ideas, plus a great tip from Sara Conner Tanguay‎ on using putty or modeling clay to mask out round edges of things you need to paint that tape just can’t handle.

Via Make Magazine’s Mike Senese on Twitter I saw this 3D printed swatch on Thingiverse by Roykinn7. With this around, you can have a reference for common thicknesses you might use in a 3D design. 

On Hackaday, Lewin Day shows how he was able to make a custom sprocket to make his electric scooter faster. He used a free piece of software called Sprocketeer 2.0 to get the exact template for the sprocket geometry, and then went at it with an angle grinder and a rotary tool to get the thickness and tapering just right. 

Speaking of Hackaday, Hackaday Supercon is coming up soon, November 15 – 17 in Pasadena, CA. There are some great speakers and workshops planned, so check it out. 

For you East Coasters, the Rochester, New York Maker Faire is coming up on Nov 23 at the Rochester Convention Center. 

For this week’s Digi-Key spotlight, they’ve got a new guide up on Maker.io on how to choose the right cables and connectors for your project. USB, ribbon cables, D-Sub, audio jacks — it’s kinda neat to see the different PCB board mounting types for these connections. Each of them links into Digi-Key’s catalog, for a deep dive into all the available options.

And that does it for this week’s show. Be sure to subscribe, leave a thumbs up or a comment. Get on the Maker Update email list for a few extra bonus projects each week. A big thanks to my Patrons on Patreon and to Digi-Key electronics for making this show possible. Next week, we’ll have the monthly Adafruit edition of Maker Update over on their channel, but hang tight. Thanks for watching, and I’ll see you soon.