Sculptor, kinetic artist, and longtime MAKE pal Alan Rorie is back with this beautiful “pressure door” built for a “Nautilus” art car project commissioned from San Francisco art collective Five Ton Crane. The door locks and unlocks via RFID, and the huge, four-foot diameter mechanical iris in its center is motorized. Rorie, who is a specialist in iris apertures, also built four smaller irising windows for the car’s body.
This is actually really convenient, because I’ve been needing a pair of these. I just didn’t realize it until I saw them. Thanks, Instructables user art.makes!
This is Norweigian Kåre Halvorsen’s MorpHex project. +1: MorpHex improves upon the traditional static hexapod body by the addition of a set of six radially-irising arms, each of which carries the top leg joint of one of the six legs. By expanding or contracting the iris, the diameter of MorpHex’s overall footprint can be dynamically […]
Spotted in the MAKE Flickr pool, this beautiful handmade watch from user gogglerman. A detailed tutorial has been posted on Instructables, as well, and it looks like it was all done without the use of machine tools.
Spotted in the MAKE Flickr pool, this business-card-sized working mechanical iris model from clide8. The plan is freely available on Thingiverse.
Last week I posted about this cool twist-action irising jewelry box by Matt, from Seattle, WA, (aka Thingiverse user msruggles) and the first real prototype that user Linkreincarnate printed on his Up! personal 3D printer.
Since that time, Matthew LaBerge of Minneapolis, MN, (aka Thingiverse user labmat) has printed his own copy and posted a video showing off its mechanical action. Bonus points for the lovely blue color!
Matt’s printer–which he calls “IceBot One”–is a heavily customized rig using MakerBot electronics and components from what appears to be a salvaged CNC mill. Check out the deets in his Flickr stream.
It’s also worth noting that, since first posting his original design, msruggles has published a shortened version that will print faster and use less material.
Very cool design from Thingiverse user msruggles, printed as shown above by user Linkreincarnate, who reports some reification issues with the model requiring hand finishing. Gonna keep an eye on this as it develops.
