Hello ! I finished printing all the tibias and I’m now the coxas print… I also sprayed some rubber at the end of the tibia to avoid slipping.
I also completely finish the head assembly
As always, stay tuned 😉
Hello ! Good news, the first leg prototype is now assembled 😀 I have printed a tibia and a coxa in order to see if the parts can be well-printed before going to mass production. I had to modify a bit the coxa to pass the cable inside (now it should be ok) and also the tibia (only the design for a better look). I still have some tests to run but I think the parts are ready to be printed 😉
Stay tuned !
Hello ! Another update about the print process. I have successfully printed the femur parts and I will soon begin the assembly 🙂 I finally have good settings for the print supports, so hopefully everything should go well now 😉
The femur is composed of 3 parts: The front and back covers are screwed to the servos and the middle shell is maintained with 4 metal rods.
Hi all, quick update about the printing process. For now all is good, I have great result with my silver filament and my setting on Simplify3D. I have a bit modified the femur design and split it in 3 parts instead of 2. Thanks to this, I have much better results of the motor’s supports.
So, in the next few weeks I will print all the femur parts, then the tibia. A lot of hours of printing in perspective 🙂 because each femur parts takes 2h to print (6legs x 3parts x 2h = 36h) and 2h for each tibia part (24h in total) !!!
Stay tuned !
Hi !
So, I have been doing some prints during the weekend… and it’s not as easy as expected 😕 First of all, the PVA filament. It requires a lot of tests and tuning in order to print it correctly, up to now the PVA is still giving me hard work so I’m unfortunately not using it for the supports… so for the moment I print them in PLA.
The other thing is the print quality. As I want Animabot to look as close as possible to the rendering, I need very clean parts and if possible without visible layers. To get to this, I will have to sand the parts with a tumbler, apply a filler, then sand again and finally paint ! lot of work in perspective, but this is the price for a good-looking 😀
I have been able to print the gears and the board support without any issues because they have simple shape:
The femur is the next part to print, I had to increase a bit the width of the walls to get it more rigid. The femur is printed with a 0,1mm layer resolution and result is very good even if it needs to be a little sanded or polished. There is a gap between both parts, it’s because the motor’s supports are a bit higher due to the printed supports… not all residues have been removed 😦  as you can also see, cables just fit tight inside ! no more space 😉
In Bonus, here are the print fails ^^
If anyone know how to get the supports printed in PVA correctly, it would be great ! any tips or ideas are welcomed !
Hello ! Animabot is finally getting printed \o/
After months of waiting, the first part has been printed 🙂 I started easy to get my hands on the FlashForge, then I will go more and more complex 😉 Actually, I’m printing a universale spool holder, because the Flashforge spools are “proprietary” and I need to use other filament brand.
As you can see, I printed one gear of Animabot’s head for testing purposes. Now I know the configuration for PLA, I can continue to print the rest of the part 😉 I’m really getting excited knowing that Animabot will finally “come to life” !
More to come in the next weeks, stay tuned 😉
Hello,
As you know Animabot was in standby for the last few weeks, mainly because my 3D printer was not delivered… this has come to an end ! I decided to cancel the Craftbot order and buy another one ! I should receive the FlashForge Dreamer 3D printer next week, if all goes well 😉
In the mean time, I began slicing the parts to prepare the prints and be ready for D-day 🙂 The dreamer use the Flash Print software with the slic3r engine for G-Code generation. Flash Print is very easy to use and provides many setting options. Oh ! and the best is the printer has 2 heads ! this means I can print parts in PLA or ABS and the supports in PVA (water-soluble filament).
I also had to adapt a little bit the body and cut it in 3 parts because the build volume of the printer is too small for the whole body… That’s why you see one of the parts of the body on the images above. Anyway, I’m looking forward to finally receive my printer and finally begin to fabricate and assemble Animabot !
Stay tuned 😉
Hexapod Robot Animabot created by Emmanuel Sichet is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License.
Animabot & Anim4Bot names created by Emmanuel Sichet are licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License.
Anim4Bot 