Duck-E (Chip-E Duck Remix!) by criznach

Last crawled date: 3 years ago

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZghpAGHpL9g
This is a Chip-E remix, but created completely from scratch from parts I had on hand. In 3 days. It uses the Chip-E biped concept and much of it's design, but it uses smaller Corona 929MG 9 gram servos and an Arduino Pro Mini. I think it's about 70% the size of the real Chip-E.
I designed the duck in MeshMixer, and all of the mechanical components in Fusion 360. To get the duck to connect to the mechanical bits, I created a negative form of the body cavity including screw holes in Fusion 360. I exported that body as an STL file, which I then imported into MeshMixer and subtracted it from the duck body. The body was split into main body, head, and beak to reduce support requirements, and to allow me to print an orange beak. :)
The beak and head parts were glued onto the main body using acetone. I also acetone smoothed the body, but the results were not great. The eyes were painted on with acrylic paint.
The mechanical components were designed completely in Fusion 360 by measuring the servos I had on hand using a digital caliper. I used the standard mounting screws that came with the servos, and the standard servo horns and wheels to connect to the feet and legs.
The electronics are built from an Arduino Pro Mini clone mounted on perfboard. There is no fancy circuitry to speak of, just breakouts for the servos. There is one current limiting resistor for the buzzer.
I intended the duck to be powered by a small 2 cell LiPo battery, but I did not have one on hand and could not get one quickly. So instead I've added a 5mm power jack on the bottom plate and power it with a 5v wall plug for now. A small battery should fit on top of the circuit board.