Animatronic Beating Heart Box by SoPro

Last crawled date: 3 years, 2 months ago

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SpEdK53GU-g
A few weeks ago my 10yr old niece came to visit us at the house and wanted to check out some of my latest projects in the garage. I was happy to see her enthusiasm for my projects and decided to show her a thing or two in Fusion 360.
She wanted to draw a heart that I could print out for her. She spent 15mins drawing a 2D heart shape before we ran out of time. I decided to finish her design and make her something useful. Decided to make a nice sized jewelry box out of her initial drawing.
Then when adding the 3D elements to her drawing and making the box functional I had the idea to add a bit of electronics to this design to make it one of a kind. Thought it would be cool to have the heart beat with a little motor and bear some sentimental wording.
The idea was to contain all of the electronics in the lid of the design to allow as much room as possible to make this an actual jewelry box. I first sized up the battery pack and motor to make sure I had room to fit the main components. Used a basic cam/motor design to give me the correct linear actuation for the heartbeat. I designed a button system using a latching push button and a small heart button cover protruding from the top left of the lid face.
From the first assembly drawing to the actual printed prototype only had one issue with the lid top binding because the inner lid collar was too wide. Taking 12mm off the published lid version did the trick and provided a nice, smooth operation.
After taking pictures and writing a submission for Thingiverse.com I was ready to give her the first working prototype. She was so proud to not only have something that was one of a kind, and inspired by her own imagination but also to have collaborated with her “Uncle that is an inventor” on a project. If she keeps showing interest like this in the engineering field I predict she will be better that I am very quick in her life.
Was happy to do a nice and creative thing with my niece but also to share it with the rest of the community.
Enjoy!