While I was waiting for the Celluclay project to dry some more, I decided to work on a turning head mechanism for a Bucky skull made out of PVC. The inspiration for this effort came from PropMaster's site. However, while his design has 2 axes of motion, I built it to only have one, which is the head turn motion. Always before, when I had built a head-turn mechanism, I had put the servo on the shoulder, which always made it somewhat difficult to hide. What I liked about PropMaster's design is that the mechanism was down inside the body, so it should be easy to hide.
As you can see in the picture, I only built it from the chest up. I still need to figure out what I'm going to do with it to make it look like it has a full body. At this point, I do not know if I'll want him standing, sitting, or something else, so I don't know what his lower body will look like yet.
Before I built it, I was thinking that there would probably be too much friction for a standard servo to operate this mechanism. Having now built it, I see that there is actually not that much friction, so I believe a servo can operate it. I still need to work out where and how I will mount the servo. That will come in a follow-up post.
Turning head mechanism part 2
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Page last modified 09/07/2009