Alien Animatronic Mandibles

The lips on this animatronic device are awsome. Tried to find a little more information on the model. No luck.

But in searching for info on how this might be done, I found the other videos below.





[Image captured from the video: Alien AnimatronicMandibles]
[via Neatorama]

Funny: The Tunstallator

KT Tunstall and animatronics. Who could ask for more? Possibly the Dylanator? I'm headed out to my garage right now!

Kinematic Models

Many was the time a gaggle of sixth grade engineers and I would stand by the white board sketching out a gear assembly in an effort to design a structure that would duplicate the movement needed for a project. This is one area where I always wished I had deeper training so I could have more ably guided my students. I did the best I could by having samples of mechanisms and photos of what other students had done. (And the trusty whiteboard.)

I saw an article about a site called Kinematic Models for Design Digital Library (KMODDL) at Cornell University. What a great resource! They have photos and movies of a variety of mechanical models. Are you trying to describe a universal joint to a group of seventh graders? Navigate to this site and you can show them a model of a universal joint. You can also show them a video of the machine in action.

If I still ran a tech lab, I'd build a challenge or two around a few of these descriptions. Possibly have students reproduce some of the them using their Lego kits. If you like this kind of stuff, this site will become a favorite.

[Story source frome Makezine:KMODDL - Kinematic models for design digital library: http://blog.makezine.com/archive/2007/12/kmoddl_kinematic_models_f.html?CMP=OTC-0D6B48984890]
[Image: Grabbed from KMODDL/Universal Joint; http://kmoddl.library.cornell.edu/model.php?m=240]

Animatronic Hand

In the middle school technology lab I facilitated, we used to have a station with a FischerTec building set. For those of you who have never seen these kits, it is kind of like Lego on steroids. I am told that it is often used by engineers to prototype mechanical designs.

Anyway, I would often get someone who wasn't excited about any of the projects they were asked to build with the fancy FischerTec blocks. They would whine and complain:

Whiny Student: "Mr. G, all this stuff is too easy. I've been building things since I was two."

Wise Old Tech Teacher: "OK. Build a working hand."

Whiny Student: "No problem! I'll have it done by the end of the hour."

I'd come back the next day and usually they were stuck and would say, "This is harder than it sounds." They would have a jointed hand but couldn't make it grip. We'd talk about how a human hand works and maybe look at a few pictures.

Wise Old Tech Teacher: "Try again. Only this time, just make a working finger."

I had kids come after school to spend extra time on that assignment. A few came close. A couple of young men got a finger they could control with a motor but weren't able to get a whole hand built.

I saw this video the other day and thought if this had been available for my kids, they would have solved "the finger challenge" in no time. The walls of my classroom would have disappeared and my students could have built off what others had already done.



Written instructions and diagrams can be found here.

[Image:"Simple Animatronics (robotic hand)." Instructables. 01 Jun 2007. Instructables. 11 Oct 2007 .]

Articulated Werewolf Mask

I had a post on Monday about werewolf stilts. The same person is still at it and has created a head to go along with the stilts. She gives a step-by-step description of how she created a mask that moves with the wearers jaws.

I was discussing this with another tech teacher over coffee. In our lab we used to challenge kids to create an articulated head that was run with pneumatics. They were doing this pretty much from scratch or building off of what other students had figured out. If the kids had been able to access videos like this one, the quality of their work would have increased immensely.

I wonder how many of us are taking advantage of what the web has to offer? How many of us are still running our classrooms like the web doesn't exist? These kids are going out into a world where the web is going to be a part of their professions.

Anyway, take a look at this mask and the plans are at this site.



[Image: "Make an articulated Werewolf Mask." gryphern home page (on YouTube). YouTube. 15 Oct 2007 .]