Sep 24, 2015 | By Kira
Think of Iron Man, the Iron Giant, Astro Boy, Terminator, or any other cool robotic super hero. Along with their sleek metallic shells and futuristic weapons technology, they all have one important design feature in common: glowing eyes, blazing thrusters, and a whole host of flickering, flashing, light-up buttons and displays. In a new Instructable, Jason Cuenco shows you how to 3D print and build your own light-up action figure using Tinkerplay models, LED lights, and an Arduino-compatible Teensy board.
Cuenco is a California-based software engineer, currently focused on 3D printing and scanning applications in the optical industry, who has a penchant for dabbling with artistic and technical side projects in “an effort to find that elusive balance between Science and Art.” He’s also a big fan of Autodesk Tinkerplay and TinkerCAD, free apps that let you design and customize articulated creatures that can be made on a 3D printer. “It’s a lot of fun to use on iOS, Android, and Windows Mobile and pretty much guarantees excellent results,” said Cuenco.
An interesting feature of Tinkerplay figures is that, unlike many composite 3D printed objects, they are carefully designed to print without the need of supports. In place of these supports, Autodesk designed special holes and tunnels that can be used to feed wires and mount LEDs. Tinkerplay connecters can also be freely mixed through TinkerCAD, allowing for some cool mix-and-match building options. As a fun and experimental project, Cuenco decided to design a Tinkerplay compatible torso, head and thruster and then integrate LED lights in order to create a cool-looking robotic figure that is ready for action.
In his Instructable, Cuenco details how he designed, printed and assembled the figure. The 3D printed parts include the Tinkerplay torso/battery pack, head, and thrusters, all of which he printed with silver PLA on an Ultimaker 2 3D printer at 0.1mm layer height. The green pieces were printed on a MakerBot Replicator 2 3D printer at 0.2mm using glow in the dark PLA.
“Using the provided ball, socket and pelvis parts in TinkerCAD, I constructed this electronic backpack piece. Special attention was made to ensure that 3mm LED's would fit through the ball joints,” explained Cuenco. “I made cutouts to fit a 10 mm LED at the chest, and a slide switch on the bottom. I also designed a print-in-place battery door for ease of assembly, and pulled a stock head and thruster part from TinkerPlay and used TinkerCAD cut out holes to expose more light.”
Additional parts required include an Arduino-compatible Teensy 3.1 Board (which fits nicely inside the torso), AAA batteries, black and red wire, and several blue, white, yellow and red LED lights. He used a simple Christmas tree script to get the lights to pulsate just like an authentic robot, and to diffuse the light, he used foam behind the large eye cutouts.
“The parts I linked are fully remixable, and many of the stock Tinkerplay parts have tunnels and holes that can be used for wiring up more electronic parts, so there’s a lot of room for improvement,” said Cuenco.
The result is a fun weekend and completely customizable project for designers of all ages and skill-levels that will bring light and life to just about any figure you could think of. Cuenco may be on a mission to find the perfect balance between Art and Science, but with this project, he may have landed on the trifecta of simplicity, creativity, and 3D printing fun.
Posted in 3D Printing Applications
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